Hard Truths
by Panache
Summary: When Mac and Webb run into each other in Italy in the middle of a CIA operation old hurts and unspoken issues come to the surface.  Set two years after the series finale.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer:As always, someone else's sandbox. They just have better toys.

Author's Note: If you couldn't figure it out from the summary, this is a Webb/Mac fic. There you've now been appropriately warned, and if necessary may run screaming for the hills. If you're feeling adventurous and choose to stay, welcome aboard.

This fic was inspired by all that was left unsaid between Webb and Mac and the line from 4 solution, when Mac says in reference to their last talk at Manderlay that if she were to have that conversation over again she would ask different questions.

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**Piazzo San Marco  
Venice, Italy  
2300 Zulu**

_How the hell did I get here?_ Mac asked herself, not for the first time that night, and she was betting not for the last. It wasn't that here was such a horrible place to be. No, there were definitely worse places to be than Venice at Midnight with the fabled dueling orchestras of St. Mark's square providing all the ambiance a couple could ever need. Even for a solitary woman with nothing but a tour-book and a cappuccino it had its own kind of charm.

Idly, she stirred her extravagantly over-priced drink and watched as an older man resplendent in Hawaiian shirt and camera equipment that proclaimed him as the quintessential American tourist, gallantly extended a hand to the twelve-year old girl sitting next to him. There proceeded a merry dance that involved much eye-rolling and coaxing and group encouragement from the other family members at the table, until finally the girl was on her feet, and being led to the open-area just beyond the tables. Mac tried not to stare as the man, so obviously the girl's father, proceeded to guide her patiently and with no little humor through an awkward waltz, tried not to note the embarrassed but pleased smile that played on the her face, as she made more of a show of reluctance than anything else, tried not to think about all experiences she'd never had. Tried and failed miserably.

As though drawn by the innocent, unfettered sweetness of the moment the two had created, other couples began to drift into the square—a pair barely in their twenties so ridiculously in love it could only be their honeymoon, a middle-aged slightly overweight couple pleasantly laughing and bickering even as they moved with the easy surety of long familiarity, two octogenarians barely swaying in time to music their faces the very picture of a contentment she'd never felt. So many couples . . .

A pair of college-kids traipsed by in a ridiculous parody of a tango. Mac dropped her spoon with a clatter and fumbled for her wallet.

She'd changed her mind. St. Mark's Square at midnight sucked. This whole idea sucked.

Harm had told her. Harm had warned her that this wasn't the right way to deal with things, that taking her ticket and their itinerary and proceeding on their carefully planned honeymoon through Italy alone was truly, monumentally stupid idea. But she'd done it anyway, hell maybe she'd half done it because he'd told her not to.

And of course Harm had been right.

"God, I hate it when he does that." Mac growled, only half-aware that she said the words out loud as she dropped a twenty Euro note on the table. Not waiting for her change, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket, and began to move through the mass of tables, barely glancing up as she brushed past a man making his way towards the interior of the café.

"Scusi," they both muttered nearly simultaneously, and then he was past her, continuing on his preset trajectory without so much as a backwards glance.

But it was enough.

Enough to recognize the voice, the smell of him. Even after three years, the sense memory was as strong as it had ever been, as though in her frantic efforts to absorb as much of him as possible during that disastrous year of snatched moments and stolen time, she'd somehow etched him too permanently on her psyche to ever be erased, even by the acid of her own bitterness.

_What the hell is Webb doing in Italy?_

Because there was really only one answer to that question, her Marine instincts suddenly kicked in, and she realized she'd paused by the table a second too long, drawn too much attention to the moment. Bending her head on the pretense of rummaging through her purse, she made a bit of a show of finding some chap-stick, applied it, and dropped it back in her purse.

Then like she'd done all those years ago on the deck at Manderlay, she walked away without looking back.

----

He didn't watch her go, didn't need to, but he registered it, noted it, and mentally catalogued her path as she headed east across the square toward the Castello Ovest area, filing it away for possible later reference.

Later he might take the time to be surprised at the fact that Sarah MacKenzie-Rabb was in Venice, apparently alone, not a week after her wedding, but right now it was game on, and when things were moving, when he worked, Clayton Webb didn't get surprised, just adjusted calculations. So having taken into account the presence of one former Marine Colonel, factored her into the asset category for his ever present contingency plans, he let the thought of her go.

His eyes had been scanning piazza the entire time, flicking back and forth, noting every face as he waited for the man who was supposed to be his contact on this assignment. A vague sense of unease had plagued him throughout this entire mission. Oh it was a simple enough one—go to Italy, meet and greet one of the most prominent arms dealers still working in Western Europe, arrange a rather hefty purchase as the supposed Dutch middle-man for a group operating out of South Africa, setting up one of the larger stings they'd have in several years, and possibly permanently burning him for Western European work ever again.

"It's a calculated but acceptable risk, Clayton," Kershaw had told him, laying it out in cold, clean logical steps. But they both knew he was able to read between the lines. His usefulness in Europe was drying up, hell Europe was drying up. Sooner or later he was going to have to start taking assignments back down in South America or the Pacific Rim, start making use of those contacts he'd so carefully built during his exile, during his all too frequent trips away from Sarah, or finally pack it in. This mission and its likely outcome was Kershaw's way of an ultimatum.

They both knew what his choice would be. He'd started working with Galindez on his Spanish months ago. He and Costa were supposed to start on the Portuguese when he got back.

Which actually wouldn't be that long from now, less than twenty-four hours in fact. Everything had gone terribly smoothly, the meet, the evaluation, the preliminary buy, the final arrangement, all of it ticking along right according to plan . . . which was probably why he was so damned uneasy. Now all that was left was the information drop with the CIA courier, the redundancy plan in case something went wrong between now and his debriefing back in the U.S.

_Like, oh say, two of Eytinge's men bearing down in your direction and no sign of the courier who should have been here two minutes ago?_

Yup, that'd fit the criteria.

----

She was walking without really seeing anything, or paying attention to her route, just keeping to the main street in a kind of unconscious effort to keep from getting lost in Venice's endless maze of backways and ever-changing names. Without a destination, her normally purposeful walk had slowed to a near crawl, as every step took her a little further from the sounds of the orchestras, from the crowd of happy tourists, from the man she really didn't ever want to see again.

Of course he would be here. It was like some cosmic joke, fate mocking her with the reminder of one screw-up while she was trying to pick up the pieces of her latest catastrophe. She and fate were obviously not on the best of terms right now.

Which in the grand scheme of things, she thought was monumentally unfair. After all she'd given fate more than she had any living person, placed her trust in it wholly and completely. Spurred on by her intensive therapy sessions with McCool, by her final supposed willingness to choose something other than being alone, she'd given in to the path it seemed she was always meant to travel, the one she'd been destined for since a twist of kismet gave her the face of a dead woman.

And when she'd gambled her future on that same perverse imp, she'd done it with a free and easy heart, confident that the currents of destiny would take care of her far better than her own awful choices. After all, she'd chosen Chris, chosen Farrow, chosen alcohol, chosen Clay . . . it really couldn't be much worse.

And it hadn't been, at first. It had actually been heady and wonderful. Everything from the move to the London, to furnishing a place of their own, to the almost reverent love-making, it had been the most perfect time of her life. But the perfection didn't last, got eroded away by a hundred little things—by increasing tension with Mattie who saw her and her quest for a child as a threat to Harm's attentions; by Harm's ever-growing job responsibilities which took him far away even though he sat right across the kitchen table; by her slow-dawning realization that British firms, while more than willing to hire American Securities or Corporate lawyers, had very little use for a litigator with no experience in their procedures and the rather unhelpful specialization of U.S. Military law.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, the realities of a life she'd plunged into headfirst, without thought, caught up with her, stifling the happiness of the realization of her greatest dream, under the weight of so many other dreams which lay dead or dying. Until she'd stood on the platform in the bridal shop, watching the seamstress pin a woman she didn't know into a dress she didn't want to wear.

'_Why do you always choose to be alone?'_

She'd so wanted to prove McCool wrong, get the gold-star. Upon committing to the psychotherapy, she'd gone after it with the same intensity as she did everything, wanting to move to the head of the class, become the poster-child for the benefits of self-examination.

Somehow she'd bet going on her own honeymoon without a husband took her out of the running for that one.

Newly furious at having her trust so betrayed once again, she stopped in the middle of the street and threw back her head in challenge. "So what's next? Come on, I can take it."

"Sarah!"

_Ask a stupid question . . ._

She wasn't going to turn. She really wasn't. Except she already was, for the same reason she'd stopped to look for unnecessary chap-stick. Because at the end of the day, as much as she hated what Webb did, as much as his morally grey world made her skin crawl, she didn't want him to fail, didn't want him dead, and if he was chasing after her in the middle of an op that meant he needed help.

At least he damn well better need help, because she swore to God if he was kissing her like this for any other reason than the interests of National Security, she'd kill him. But even as his lips were expertly dredging up every long-buried memory, every instinctive reaction, setting her traitorous body humming in a kind of Pavlovian response to what that kiss always heralded, he maneuvered her deftly back into the shadows of a narrow back-alley, positioning his back to the street.

Moving his lips from hers to trail, little nibbling kisses along her jawline, he murmured, "Hello, darling, fancy meeting you here."

At the flippant greeting, her hands fisted in his shirt as she prepared to push him off her.

"Hit me later, Sarah. For now just lean back, think of England, and tell me who's coming across that bridge."

Despite the casual, almost lazy tone, there was no mistaking the underlying command in his voice, and the Marine in her reacted to it instinctually. Half-opening her eyes in what she hoped was a fair imitation of glazed passion, she tried to focus on the bridge just visible over his shoulder, as he moved his mouth over her neck to maintain their pretense.

"Young couple."

"Mm-hmm." His hands were moving behind her back, not on her, but doing something completely independent of the story he was weaving with the rest of his body.

"Family."

"Two men? Blonde and a redhead?"

"No, I don't-" Then she saw them, two well-dressed men, who were just a little too alert for tourists or locals, scanning the people ahead of them in a way that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge. "Yes. They're just coming up the bridge."

"Anyone behind them?"

Mac felt her heart drop. Webb's hands, his whole body had suddenly stilled, coil-spring tension radiating through his muscles, and she knew, knew what he had been doing behind her back, what he was involving her in, dragging her back down into his filth simply because she was here, convenient. _God damn you!_

But her answer was already out of her mouth, even as part of her wanted to claw it back, "No, no one."

"The moment they're across, tell me and hit the ground."

She watched as the men came to the apex of bridge, still scanning the people, the doorways, eyes flitting to the shadows. _Go away,_ she prayed silently, _Turn back._ And for a fraction of a second she thought they might, thought perhaps mercy had smiled upon her, but then one of the men shifted, his hand coming up to his hip in a move that stirred something visceral in the recesses of her combat trained mind, and suddenly she wasn't praying, wasn't doing anything other than counting the seconds, watching for their decision.

And then they were coming over, and her Hobson's choice was no choice at all. Clay and country over strangers and conscience.

"Now."

And she dropped, half-registering as she did so, Webb turning and raising the silenced-pistol he'd been assembling behind her back in one fluid deadly motion. Six quiet pops--_Two in the chest, one in the head, knocks a man down and kills him dead_--and it was done.

And her cursed gift of perfect time told her that from the moment he'd called her name to the moment the last shot had been fired, her world had spun out of control in less than three minutes flat.

Two more heads for Agent Webb's office wall, two more notches in a belt she'd never wanted to wear.

She told herself as Clay dragged her away, that they'd both had guns, that she'd seen them reach.

----

The gun went into the canal two bridges up, the silencer three after that. _Damn._ He was now officially permanently fucked in Europe, and he hated South America, and Eytinge was never going to make that sale, and he was dragging an irate former Marine Colonel behind him, who was about ten-times more likely to kill him than anything else Eytinge had up his sleeve. _Damn_.

He'd missed his turn.

_Damn_

The doubling back seemed to shake Mac out of the walking-coma she'd been in since the moment she'd told him to shoot, and she wrenched her wrist out his grip with enough force to have done serious damage to one of them if he hadn't let go.

"Don't touch me, you bastard." Her voice was raw, abrasive, like steel wool on new skin, and God, how he wanted to reach out to her, comfort her, but she'd never really taken comfort in his touch, pleasure yes, but comfort, not often. So he reached for her wrist instead, only to have her slap his hand away again.

"I said don't you fucking touch me."

Well that just wasn't an option because they needed to move, and he didn't trust her to follow him, so dragging . . . pretty much going to happen. Clamping his hand down on her upper arm, he hissed, "Curse later. Walk now."

She wanted to fight him, thought about it even. Not that he blamed her. He'd just given her a whole new set of nightmares to add to her collection, nicely gift-wrapped and guaranteed to last a lifetime.

He bet Harm bought her flowers and jewelry. You never went wrong with the classics.

"I swear to God, Mrs. Rabb, if you don't start moving I will knock you out and carry you to the safehouse, but you are coming. Later, you and Harm can fight over breaking my nose again. Sell tickets, make it a charity event for puppies."

"MacKenzie," her voice was flat, dead.

"What?"

"It's still MacKenzie."

"You kept your name, how very modern. Walk." That got her moving again for at least a few more blocks, and then she pulled up short again. At this rate they were either (a) get arrested by the police for disorderly conduct before getting to the CIA safehouse or (b) die of old age. He didn't relish the report for either.

"What now?" He practically spat the words at her.

"I didn't marry him. It's still MacKenzie because I didn't marry him."

Oh.

He blinked, all other thought momentarily wiped out by this revelation, and his heart did an odd little lurch that was halfway between a leap and just simply throwing in the towel. Why was she telling him this? Why was it so important to tell him this? Why in the name of all that was holy was she telling him this now, here? At the thought of exactly what here and now was, he blinked again and reset.

"I want my toaster back." And they were moving again.

"You didn't send us a toaster."

"You must have gotten at least three toasters, everyone gets three toasters, how do you know one of them isn't mine?"

"You didn't send us anything, Webb."

"Checked for my name, Sarah?"

"Yes." There was that lurch again. "I wanted make sure we sent it back to you . . . in pieces."

And throwing in the towel it was. His features tightening into what he knew from habit was a pretty inscrutable mask, Clay scanned the buildings until he found the number he'd been searching for.

_Home sweet hell for the next twelve hours. Lovely._

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Thanks for reading. All comments and criticisms appreciated.

Panache


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimers: Yup, not mine. If it were there would have been more Webb, and people would not be deciding their lives with a coin toss.

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**CIA Safehouse**

**Undisclosed Location**

**Venice, Italy**

**2336 Zulu**

Clamping her jaw tight in an effort to control her trembling body, Mac leaned back against the door of safehouse and forced herself to let out a long, slow exhale, then inhaled again, consciously regulating her breathing in the way her yoga instructor had taught her. She felt raw and exposed, as though someone had turned her inside-out, leaving her with no protections. Thirty minutes ago, she'd been enjoying a cappuccino and watching people dance, and now . . . now the only thing she saw when she closed her eyes was Clay's face when she told him she hadn't married Harm, and two men silhouetted against the Venice sky for one brief moment before they fell.

God, what the hell was wrong with her? She'd been complicit the death of two men. She'd told Webb to pull the trigger, and not fifteen minutes later the most important thing on her mind, the only thing she could think about was making sure Clay knew that he shouldn't call her Mrs. Rabb, that she hadn't gone through with marrying Harm. She didn't even know why it had been so fucking important. It had just been at that moment, she couldn't stand the thought of Clay thinking she was someone other than who she was.

A hand brushed her shoulder, tentative and feather-light and achingly familiar. "Get away from the door, Sarah."

Bristling at her involuntary reaction to his touch, at the patronizing command, at smell of gun-smoke that still clung to him, she gritted out, "Go to hell."

"Get away from the door first. Then we can negotiate terms. I'll even let you hit me."

At the flip response, something in her snapped and as her right fist connected with Webb's jaw, Mac registered two things—keeping up her Marine-style training regime was finally paying off and a right cross with a closed fist still hurt like hell.

It didn't stop her from throwing what should have been a vicious hook with her left. But Webb was prepped for it this time and reacting with CIA-honed reflexes, stepped out of the path to catch her wrist mid-swing.

"I only promised to let you hit me once."

He should have caught both wrists. Reacting on instinct at feeling herself caught, her right arm shot out to punch him solidly in the stomach. Webb doubled over with a grunt, the hand still holding her left wrist crashing back against the door as he fought to steady himself.

All the fight left her in a rush and Mac dropped her head back, panting hard. Still keeping her left arm pinned above her, Webb let his forehead fall to her shoulder.

"Feel better?" He muttered between gasps, and even with the erratic breathing, she could hear the laughter in his voice.

Mac thought about that for a minute. "Actually . . . yeah, I do."

"Good. I don't think I could take much more of that. You punch as hard as Galindez."

"Thanks."

"Don't tell him I said that. He may feel the need to demonstrate that my memory has merely faded."

That should have been it. One of them should have stepped away, but they didn't. They just stayed suspended against that door as slowly inexorably something shifted and they weren't fighting at all. None of it was conscious or deliberate, if it had been they would have stopped, instead it was a collection of tiny, fractional movements—Clay's head tilting ever so slightly so that she could feel his breath on her skin, uneven and ragged long after he should have recovered from the punch; his hand loosening on her wrist and tangling with her fingers; her own body arching just a little bit off the door, reaching towards the heat of him. The memory of his lips, of the feel of his arms, still too fresh to ignore Mac felt herself responding in a way she hadn't in so long, reacting to Clay's reaction to her.

Even though she couldn't see them, she knew exactly what his eyes looked like right now, darkened almost to jade, flashing with want so primal it made her dizzy just from the promise they held. She'd seen them that way once before, as he looked at her from across the training room of the Marine Corps gym and had never forgotten it. She'd never felt more powerful or more sexual than she had that afternoon, going at it with her fight-instructor, with Clay watching her every move, knowing that what she was doing, this raw display of physical aggression, this part of herself, truly turned him on, to the point that she'd kept expecting him to come drag her out of the ring. He never did.

What he did do was grab her in the hallway just outside the Women's Locker Room and drag her into the closet where they kept the towels.

The moment had in so many ways been absolutely typical for them. Her begging desperately to know something, anything about where he was going next, how long he'd be away from her. Him deftly avoiding her questions with flip noncommittal responses, until he'd driven her to distraction with his hands, his mouth, pushing all concerns out of her mind.

But he'd spoken to her, whispered promises and desires against her skin that lingered long after he was gone.

"_I'm going to think of this, Sarah. While I'm gone, while I'm too far away from you, every time I close my eyes you're going to be there. Tell me you'll think of this, think of me touching you, wanting you . . . Tell me, Sarah . . . tell me you'll think of me."_

She _had_ thought about it, about him and that moment, more than she should have, more than she wanted to, taken the memory out over and over until it was worn and threadbare. It wasn't that the sex had been so spectacular. No, it had been what had prompted the sex, that Clay had watched her acting as a Marine and seen a woman, had wanted that woman, that Marine, so badly he'd pulled her into a closet to have her. That was why even after all the other memories had been boxed away and put up on some high shelf in the storage closet of her mind, this one stayed.

Even after Harm, this one stayed. Perhaps taken out a little more infrequently, but it stayed all the same. At first she'd tried to turn it into a fantasy, Harm watching her, Harm wanting her, but then he'd come to pick her up at the gym in London, and she realized it would always remain just that with Harm, a fantasy. He might think it was neat that she could throw a punch, might even depend on her ability to do so occasionally, but it would never result in her pinned against a door, head spinning with desire.

"Sarah." She felt her name on his lips more than heard it, soft and low, brushed against her skin like a kiss, and she didn't know whether it was a question or a plea.

Whatever it was, it snapped her back into reality.

No! This could not happen. This was not going to happen. Not now, not after everything – Tanveer, and Harm, and those two men. Oh God, those two men. The memory, not of their bodies, or their faces, but the calm crystal clarity she'd felt the moment before she'd said the word 'Now', knowing exactly what would happen, what Webb would do. burned her. It was that memory that caused her to reach for words she swore she'd never say again.

"Documented connection between intimate violence and sexuality . . . you're still twisted, Clay."

His fingers tightened convulsively against hers. "And we were so close . . ."

Then he withdrew, totally, completely. Stepping away, he moved back into the room, and she could practically watch him fold in on himself, until nothing remained but the impenetrable outer shell.

Needing to look at something else, to think about something other than what had just happened, or not happened, or whatever, she pushed off the door and started to take in her surroundings.

The apartment was . . . surprisingly cozy, actually, small, but clean and decorated with little touches that bespoke a mature feminine hand. She'd always pictured CIA safehouses as cold, impersonal warehouses, not quite so homey. Stepping over to the kitchenette, she ran her hand along the rim of a hand painted pitcher, touched the delicate gauzy curtains. You'd swear one of the old ladies who hand-crafted lace at the stores in Burano lived here.

There was a soft _snick_, and Mac turned to find Webb removing a hidden drawer from the bottom of the side board. _Well, you would until he did that._ Somehow she just couldn't picture the little grandmother who'd sold her the christening outfit having much use for two Glock .9 mms and a secure cell phone. As she watched him check the magazines on both guns with no more emotion than one might boot up a computer to check email in the morning, she couldn't help but think the man was so like this little apartment -- a good show, even charming in a way, adept at hiding a deadly nature just below the  
surface, but in the end there was nobody home.

Sometimes during what she still thought of as "their year," she'd convinced herself otherwise, constructed a strawman of real feelings out a million little pieces -- the flash of something in his eyes, a subtle inflection in his voice, a tremor in his touch – but she'd been fooling herself.

If there'd been a person underneath all that charm, a flesh and blood man, rather than an animated impenetrable shell, he would never have put her through the hell of his death and expected their relationship to survive, would never have twisted the knife even deeper by playing that ridiculous game with the gifts, by making her feel more than she'd ever let herself feel for any man other than Harm, only to yank it all away. No, if Clayton Webb had ever had a real emotion in his life, he certainly wouldn't be calmly and coolly going about his business as though he hadn't killed two men less than forty-eight minutes ago, or had her pressed up against a door less than five, while she wavered precariously between wanting to shoot him and begging to be held.

He finished checking one of the Glocks and held it out to her. "Here. You might want this."

No, she didn't want it, did want any part of it. She might be a Marine. She might be a weapons expert, might have killed in the past, and might know she would kill again if necessary, but she didn't have to acknowledge it with the casual, everyday-occurrence efficiency Webb was displaying right now. She refused.

He just stood there watching her, maybe reading every vicious, ugly emotion playing across her face, maybe not seeing any of it. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, but was actually just shy of a minute and forty-six seconds, he walked towards her and set it on the kitchen counter with a sigh. "I have to code in."

With that he walked past her to the door at her right, opening it to reveal a tiny bedroom. Stepping in he half closed the door behind him, cell-phone already at his ear, leaving her alone. For a long time, the only thing she could do was look at the gun, still resting on the counter, trying to decide whether to be appreciative of his faith in her ability or chilled by his belief in the worst of her nature. She couldn't.

Part of her wanted to leave it on the counter. Really most of her wanted to leave it on the counter. The Marine picked it up, checked the safety, and slipped it in the waistband of her pants to rest securely against the curve of her back.

It was then that she became conscious of the half-conversation seeping out into the room. "No, I'm sure. Definitely Eytinge's men. I'd met them earlier . . . No, no I don't know what tipped them off, everything had been going so well. Is there any word from Wilkerson? . . . Damn, I was afraid of that."

Moving over to the door, she looked in to find him standing in the center of the room, hand on his hip, cell phone to his ear, and though it was a suede jacket he pushed back rather than a suit coat, and a casual blue-striped button down shirt underneath rather than a vest and tie, the posture was too eerily reminiscent of Webb, Harm's pain-in-the-ass nemesis-sometimes-friend. _Why the hell couldn't you have stayed Harm's, Clay?_

"Yeah, yeah, we're fine. We can probably wait the full time if necessary. Yes _we_. Look just take this down – MacKenzie, Sarah. Retired Marine Corps. Rank: Colonel. Clearance number: 0-6-Alpha-Bravo-7-7-5-9-Rio-2-3. Call Kershaw, he knows her. He'll get it done." There was a pause and Webb dropped his head to pinch the bridge of his nose in consternation. "Yes, that Sarah. No, I'm fine. Just . . ." He touched his fingers lightly to the spot on his jaw where she'd hit him, then, either coming to a decision or reacting to something on the other end of the line, snapped his attention back to the phone.

"See if you can get Adrienne to send me the Eytinge files. I'd like to see if there's a way I can salvage this." Whatever was said on the other end caused him to emit a sharp bark of hollow laughter. "No, no I didn't hit my head. Okay, yeah. No I know how much trouble . . . Sofie . . ." As the name crossed his lips, his voice uncurled from its tight professionalism becoming low and familiar, and Mac felt a sharp stab of something too like jealousy as she realized he'd been talking to a woman, one who obviously knew about her. "I am sorry for ruining your evening. Come to Washington someday and I'll make it up to you." He gave a breathless little laugh and dropped his voice another half-octave. "Well, I can be very good at apologizing if properly motivated."

The words lanced through her, impossibly cruel for their unconscious truth, and she must have shifted against the wood because he snapped his head over to the doorway and froze, cell-phone still at his ear, horror writ large across his face. Mac closed her eyes to avoid being tricked.

"Sofie, I've got to go." She heard the click of the cell snapping shut, followed by soft footsteps, and suddenly she could feel him so close that she knew all she had to do was reach. She tightened her hands on her upper arms, until she swore her nails were going to draw blood. "Sarah . . ."

Still, she didn't open her eyes. "Don't. Just don't."

Harm would have pressed. Harm would have wrapped her up in his arms and kissed her hair and whispered words of apology until she forgave him and wrapped her arms around him in return. Clay took her at word and walked past her into the main room.

When he spoke again his voice was that of a clipped professional, and she felt it was safe to open her eyes. "Sofie's got her hands full. The courier's missing so that's her top priority right now, then the clean up. We're fine, unharmed, and locked down, which makes us pretty low on the totem pole. We should be okay here until the Company can take all the necessary steps."

"Necessary steps like covering up a double murder?"

Just the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth, a tightening around the eyes, a ghost emotion you might be fooled into calling pain, but insubstantial and unreal like all the others. By the time he looked up it was gone.

"Among other things."

"Are you even going to tell me what's going on?"

"An Op went south, obviously. Apparently the man I was dealing with-"

"Eytinge." She supplied the name she had heard on the phone.

Webb gave a sharp jerk of his head in confirmation, or possibly annoyance. "-- got tipped that I was not who I appeared to be. You know the rest."

"No. No, I don't know anything. Who's Eytinge? What were you trying to do? What are you going to do about those two men you just killed?"

He didn't answer, just looked at her, and she realized he had no intention of answering a single damn question more. "Need to know" and "Classified" and she was standing in the middle of an agency safehouse and still on the outside. She'd always been on the outside with him. As though seeking to drive home the point, he quipped, "You got a security clearance I don't know about?"

God damn him! He knew the security clearance for ex-military barely entitled her to read the word 'Classified' on the outside of the folders. "You got me involved."

"Believe me, I regret that." The statement could be taken so many ways, and somehow, she felt like he meant all of them. This conversation was just getting too hard.

Crossing her arms, Mac leaned her head back against the door frame and stared at the ceiling so she wouldn't have to look at him. "How long am I stuck here?"

He was quiet for so long, she thought he was ignoring the question, and she raised her head only to find he had once again moved closer, not so close that he could touch her, but close enough that if they both raised their hands they could brush fingertips. The look on his face was strange and disconcerting as he asked in a low voice, "Is here really such a horrible place to be?"

Mac just glared in response.

After a beat, Webb slid his gaze to the side, and stepped back, not far, just a pace, but far enough that they couldn't just reach out. "For something like this, Agency SOP for clean-up and extraction post incident is anywhere from six to twelve-hours from code-in. There are a lot of loose ends they'll need to tie up before we even rank. I'd make yourself comfortable."

"Twelve hours," she repeated the quote in a murderously neutral voice.

He shrugged, and the flicker of a rueful smile danced across his features. "I don't suppose you ever took up chess?"

No she never had. She'd been contemplating trying her hand at it right before he left for Germany or Indonesia or wherever the hell he'd been. Part of their move towards that indefinable something. She'd caught herself glancing at sets in shop windows or flipping open 'Chess for Dummies' in the Barnes and Noble, and just thinking about how Clay's fingers would sometimes absently brush a piece of the set that was always up in his condo with the lingering affection of someone who missed an old friend. She'd fantasized about giving the game back to him by providing him with an opponent. There'd even been a part that was hoping he'd send her a set from Germany, a heavy, handcrafted wood set that he could pass off as merely intended to be decorative, but she'd know the hope that lay behind it. Of course the fantasy set had never come.

"No. I didn't see much point."

If the barb hit its mark this time, he didn't show it. Instead he made a lazy three-hundred and sixty degree turn, letting his eyes light on the very few options available to pass the time. When he turned back to meet her eyes, looking for some indication of preference, Mac just continued to glare. He shrugged, as though to say 'suit yourself,' and moved to the tiny kitchenette.

Reaching to one of the open shelves he pulled off a glass, and then bent down below the counter. When he came back up with a bottle his hand, Mac felt her anger go up another couple of notches.

Because he could always anticipate her far better than she him, he commented, without looking up, "It's not Cana. It's actually a very nice scotch, 21-year old Glenlivet."

He held it out like a sommelier presenting a bottle of wine for her approval.

"I thought you quit."

Unscrewing the cap, he began to pour a healthy measure of the scotch. "I quit drinking around _you_ because you didn't like. But somehow tonight I don't think you'd find me fascinating if I was solving the mystery of life, so I am content to remain uninteresting."

Meeting her eyes in challenge, he leaned against the counter and took a sip. Sarah blinked first, looking away in disgust and disappointment. "Another lie. Why am I even still surprised?"

The glass slammed back down on the counter so hard, she couldn't believe it hadn't shattered. Whipping her head back around, she found him glaring at her, the same dark anger she felt clouding his face.

"When did I tell you I quit?"

"What?"

Coming out of the kitchen, he advanced on her, all thought of the drink that had started this gone. "Come on, name the date or tell me the moment. Tell me when I lied about it, and I'll mark it down. God forbid we don't have an accurate catalogue of my sins."

"You let me think-"

"I warned you from the beginning not to overestimate me, Sarah."

"Oh, so this is my fault? Because I actually thought the best of you? Because I believed the side you presented to me was the truth?"

"It was the truth."

"There's a half-a-glass of Scotch over there that says different."

"Simple truths. Your truth always has to be single-minded and one-dimensional. Don't look too close, don't scratch the surface, you might not like the layers underneath."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means nothing in my life was ever as simple as you wanted it to be."

In a blinding flash of insight, it came to her—The Company! Of course he was talking about his beloved Company. It was the shield, the excuse behind which he hid everything else, why not this? "You job! You're blaming this on your job? I've heard some pretty lame excuses before, hell, I've given most of them, but . . . My job made me do it?"

She knew the moment she'd overstepped, crossed some invisible line. Clay's eyes darkened, not to the deeper green of passion of bare minutes ago, but a hard flat olive, and he pulled back just a little, looking at her as though he'd never known her at all. She thought he was going to really tear into her, but instead he spun on his heal and walked back over to the counter and picked up the scotch. He didn't actually drink it though, just stared down at it, and asked, "When we met with Garcia, what was the first thing he did?"

Oh God! Sarah pushed off the door to move to the center of the living space, needing distance from him, from the question. Paraguay was the last place she wanted to revisit. They had never really talked about it together. Once Clay was out of the hospital, once the nerve damage had healed, he simply refused. Like he was trying to erase it all piece by piece, until the only indication it had ever happened was his scars, and well . . . _her_. In her darkest days after the incident with Tanveer, there were times when she wondered if perhaps she was his final act of erasure. The last reminder to be gotten rid of. Now all he had to contend with were his scars, and he didn't have to look at those.

For all that, hearing the name Garcia on Clay's lips now seemed to conjure Ciudad del Este from thin air, and suddenly she was back there, sitting in that café, her heart in her throat; the smell of Garcia's cologne and sweat powerful in her nostrils as she forced herself not move away from the man; the light bitterness of the tea Garcia had ordered for her and "the baby" and her relief at the fact that her condition and her status as a woman provided a plausible reason not to drink. She didn't know what she would have done if Garcia had ordered a Cana for her too . . .

Oh shit.

Clay must have been watching her, waiting for the moment when it all came together, because he spoke now. "It's called 'maintaining a tolerance'. Not exactly written up in the employee handbooks, but hang around any job long enough and you pick up the things that keep you employed."

_For employed read 'alive.'_

"You could have told me, explained"

"Yes, I suppose I could have." But he said the words in a way that said no, he didn't think he could have told her at all.

"You always shut me out, Clay. Your life, your death. It was like you selectively chose what you wanted me to see. You know I think that was the lie that hurt the most, _you_ were the lie that hurt the most."

He turned away to set the glass on the counter, and with his back still to her, said, "It's only twelve hours, Sarah. We don't have to do this. Go take a shower, get some sleep. I'll wake you when we get the call."

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As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated.

Panache


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimers etc. in the first part.

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**CIA Safehouse  
Undisclosed Location  
Venice, Italy  
0023 Zulu**

". . . you were the lie that hurt the most."

Clay flinched. Not outwardly, oh no, his ever-present, hard-won control couldn't possibly let him seem so human in front of her. But beneath the surface, in the portion he'd never figured out how to let Sarah see for very long or at the right times, a little piece of him broke, got chipped away.

She'd thought him a lie, a mask, a ruse. All his effort, all his conscious attempts at stripping himself bare before her, presenting just the man, raw and vulnerable and imperfect, and it hadn't been good enough. Because why? Because he'd left other portions outside the door? Because he hadn't brought home the cigarette-smoke deception, the amber-liquid betrayal, and dried-blood death? Because he hadn't given her Webb? Hadn't presented the Hyde to his Jekyll for her disgust and ridicule?

He wanted to lash out, fight back. Wanted to point out that she didn't exactly hold the moral high ground when it came to sharing all of herself, that there'd always been pieces of her he couldn't have, that belonged to the Marines, to Harm, to herself, the best pieces, and he'd been left with the scraps. Wanted to say no she didn't get to sit there now and talk about what he had and hadn't given her, didn't get to call him a lie when she'd never wanted the truth. And he wanted to go back to that door, to that moment of holding her, touching her, and be brave enough not to step away.

But he didn't say or do any of those things. Too tired, running on adrenaline and the high of doing horrible things, he feared what might happen, that everything would get mangled just as it had at Manderlay, and the only thing he'd accomplish would be to make her hate him more.

_Actually, that might not be possible . . ._

But he wasn't willing to test that theory. "It's only twelve hours, Sarah. We don't have to do this. Go take a shower, get some sleep. I'll wake you when we get the call."

Even with his back to her, he could feel the indecision, the start of a protest on her tongue. How was it he could know her so well and so poorly all at the same time? The little things, how to push her buttons in a hundred tiny ways—say this Sarah smiles and you swear the world is perfect, say that and the Marine will drop kick you across the room, do the other thing and Mac goes after the truth like a pit bull—tiny short-term manipulations, those came as naturally as they did with Harm. But the big ones—how to get her to love him, how to keep her from walking away—those he'd never known, never learned.

Still, they were only playing for the short-term here. Twelve hours, a fraction of a life, he could get her to do what he wanted for twelve hours . . .

Which would be a hell of a lot easier if he actually knew what that was. But then he'd always been of two minds where Sarah was concerned.

It had been a problem for them, the fact that he'd needed her so much, loved her so much, and resented every second of it, resented the weakness, the vulnerability. Sarah had charged him with trying to get back in the field too fast, with needing to prove something after Paraguay. She'd been partially right. He had needed to prove something after Paraguay, but he could have done that from a desk and a few select ops. He'd been gone because he needed the space from her, the extra time for the building of his defenses, the sharpening of his attacks, needed to look into the mirror and see only Webb. And he couldn't do that near her because near her he only wanted to be Clay, the man who made her smile, not the one who made her rage. By the time he'd found the other man again, by the time he knew exactly who he would see when he shaved in the morning, it almost hadn't mattered. Then it hadn't mattered precisely because he_had_ found that man again.

Later, on a particularly spectacular bender—one of three in the last three years, all of which corresponded to innocuous anniversaries he tried not to match up but inevitably did—he'd come to the irritating realization that he had been perhaps the worst combination of Brumby and Rabb, standing there before her begging for love and yet running from it all the same. The thought disgusted him.

And yet here he was three years later, half praying she'd stand her ground, stay and fight because it might mean she thought there was something to fight for, and half wishing she'd just have the decency to go into the other room, maintain the status quo, keep the break clean. Running and begging, always running and begging.

In the end, she decided for him. Abruptly, she stood and was across the room in a few quick strides. The slam of the door reverberated long and loud in the silence. Then he heard the rush of water. And for a fleeting moment he could see Sarah in his mind's eye. The curves of her body silhouetted against the frosted glass of his shower door, the sleek, untouched olive of her skin under the water; the way she had smiled at him so invitingly.

Dear God, he needed that drink!

Turning, he slumped against the counter, reached for the glass of scotch

. . . and dumped it out into the sink.

He wanted it too much. Despite what his ever-so-righteous Marine might think of him, of the fine lines he drew in quicksand, he hadn't lied about the drinking. He had quit, after a fashion, attempted to turn it into another facet of his job, to be approached as a clinical necessity. As a consequence those times when he most wanted the alcohol, the something to take the edge off, were precisely the times when he didn't let himself have it. It worked more often than it didn't.

Unfortunately he could foresee this being one of those nights when it didn't. Sighing, he reached for bottle, unscrewed the cap and proceeded to pour half a bottle of not-inexpensive scotch down the sink. Sofie was going to kill him.

Damn.

Still pouring out the scotch, he flipped open the cell, and thumbed the number he'd dialed so many times in the past six months.

"Candice." The voice of the Station Chief for Northern Italy was a whipcrack over the phone.

"Hello to you, too."

"Dammit Webb, you'd better be dead."

He laughed a little at that. "Sorry to disappoint you, once again."

"Grievously injured? Under attack? Under imminent attack? Captured?" He didn't answer, and she sighed, "Tell me you at least have a paper cut."

"My shame knows no bounds."

"Ha!" She let out a sharp bark of laughter, and he just knew she'd thrown her head back in that particular way that had first so captured his attention. "You and I both know you had your shame surgically removed with your conscience."

From Sofie it was a compliment, and had they been back at her rooms it simply would have inspired him to demonstrate just how little shame he had, but with Sarah so close it became a condemnation.

She heard the change in the tenor of his silence. "Jesus, that woman really does do a number on you, doesn't she?"

"I'm fine."

"You're going to have to turn an op you worked up for six months over to somebody who will probably skate through on your work and bad luck, you'll be posted to some god-awful hellhole because you're too damn good at your job to be kept in the plush confines of uninteresting places, and you're locked down with Colonel Sarah MacKenzie . . . you're_not_ fine. Hell is my safehouse still standing?"

"Yes."

"Furniture still intact?"

"For the most part."

"Mmm." There was the snap of fingers, as Sofie was no doubt gesturing emphatically to some inferior for their attention and compliance. The elfin station-chief had a remarkable ability to communicate with gestures alone. "And my scotch?"

He grimaced. She'd witnessed his little habit on more than one occasion. "I'll buy you a new bottle."

"I'm fine, Sofie. I have no problems. I just dumped a perfectly wonderful bottle of Glenlivet down the drain, because I am the picture of mental health," she mocked.

"Are you getting me the Eytinge files?"

"Have I ever let you down?"

The opening was too blatant, too perfect, and he'd always liked Sofie's laugh, liked knowing he could still make someone smile. "Well, I do remember a particular evening that started off with lascivious promises and ended with me discovering that you snore."

Sure enough, she graced him with a brief, but beautifully genuine chuckle. "Adrienne is setting up the access. You should have it in five. Now, I've got to go make bodies disappear."

Even as she said the words, the thread of an outrageous plan was already brushing against the corners of his brain. "Candice, what would it take to simply make them appear elsewhere?"

A pause, and then came the cool, calculating voice of the woman who had made her mark on the Agency at the age of twenty-one by spending three years working deep-cover organizing student protest groups behind the Iron Curtain, "More effort than I'm usually willing to expend. What are you thinking?"

"That having two of his men simply disappear off the map would confirm all of Eytinge's suspicions. On the other hand if the men were particularly insulting to the middle man for the Dark Fist . . ."

"Finding them decoratively laid out near your place of business might be a gentle calling card. It's a risk Clayton."

"It's all a risk. But you'll do it." It wasn't a question

"You better be damn good at apologizing."

------

Sofie Candice snapped the phone shut and tapped it contemplatively against her lips. Clayton Webb never ceased to surprise her, and not always in a good way. When she'd gotten the briefing on the Eytinge sting, been told who was acting as point, she'd been simultaneously apprehensive and excited. She knew his rep, ruthlessly efficient, isolated loner, creative to the point of brilliance or possibly insanity. They'd connected almost instantly, and in the past months had developed a comfortable and slightly playful professional and social relationship. She liked him, might even be a little bit in love with him, but that didn't mean she was blind to his faults.

She considered Sarah MacKenzie a fault. When she'd first started sleeping with Webb, she would have sworn no woman could get past the first few layers, very nice layers though they were. And then they'd spent New Years together, sitting by her window, sipping brandy and burning New Years resolutions over the candelabra, and his final resolution had been two simple words—"Forget Sarah".

Maybe it had been the brandy or her own inherent need to live on the edge or maybe it had just been the fact that Webb's hand had hesitated over the candle, whatever it was that had possessed her to slip off the chair, and kneel between his legs with the blatantly inviting, "I think I can help with that," the impulse had yielded more information about the man then she'd been prepared for, or possibly wanted.

The most pertinent piece being that he was _never_ going to get over the woman sitting in the safe-house with him. Either you got on board with that or you got the hell out of the way. She was still deciding which approach she'd take.

How the hell had a woman supposedly living out a fairytale in London with some Naval lawyer, wound up in Venice fucking with the head of a man, who from her experience didn't usually let anything or anyone get in far enough to fuck with him?

_So here's the question Webb . . . how badly is she screwing with you right now and is it affecting your thinking?_

Running a hand through her short blonde hair, which was slowly fading to gray, she sighed and made her decision. Webb's thinking even at half strength was better than most agents, not to mention that she thought the idea had merit. It would take effort, but if her forensic specialists did their jobs right, there really wasn't a down side. Either it rattled Eytinge enough that he reached back out to Webb, or it at least planted enough doubt, that when they brought in someone new he wasn't jumping at every shadow.

"Sam!" Her aide poked his head around the door. "Get Meyers on the phone. Tell him I have a special challenge for him, that should keep him from being too angry about the time. And check in with Adrienne in D.C. I don't want Webb calling me back because he only has access to half the files. God, knows he needs the distraction."

With nothing more than a nod, her irritatingly taciturn aide moved to carry out her instructions. But Sofie called him back with the rapid fire snaps she used when her mind had gotten ahead of processing words. "I also need you to see if you can track down another operative for me, a Victor Galindez. If he's out don't press it, but if he's reachable, I'd like to talk to him, and I think he'll talk to me. Tell him Webb's involved."

Curt nod, again, and Sam was gone. Sofie absently traced a nail along the wood grain line of her desk. She didn't know Galindez very well, not that anyone ever knew anyone in the Company well, but she had only met him once. Still from best she could tell he was about as close as Webb came to a partner or for that matter a friend, and while she'd like to think she also got counted in the list of Webb's friends, she wasn't so arrogant about her own objectivity to believe she'd be a good candidate for whatever post-mortem would be necessary after this.

And it would be necessary. She needed Webb entirely here with no reservations. If it had been up to her, she would have yanked them both by now, commandeered a private plane and shipped Sarah MacKenzie back where she belonged—half a continent away from Clayton Webb. But she had other priorities, other problems that had to take precedence over her personal concerns. A phone call to Galindez was the best she could do for him.

_I'm sorry, Clayton._

------

Mac lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep was not coming. Of course she was fighting it every step of the way, terrified of the dreams her subconscious might grant her tonight. If it had just been the threat of nightmares, she probably could have handled that. No it was the others she was afraid of, the too pleasant dreams that would leave her panting and needy. Those dreams seemed an all too real threat tonight. Her body had never really forgotten Clay's touch, and what few details may have faded with time had been brought back in sharp relief, by their moment at the door. She was not about to let herself go to sleep only to wind up moaning out his name at the most inopportune moment.

Damn him for doing this! Damn him for popping back up in her life, and bringing that cardboard box of neatly packed-up memories tumbling down to spill out at her feet in a jumbled heap, the good too mixed up with the bad to separate. And damn him for pulling that ridiculous stunt with the drink and then pulling away the moment they could have actually talked about it, them, _something_ . . .

And damn him because she didn't even know why she wanted to talk about it.

_I'm tired of dissecting relationships. The minute you start dissecting something, the damn thing is dead._

She'd meant those words three years ago, on that beach. The last thing she'd wanted to do was talk about Clay with anyone, Clay, Harm, even her own little voices. She'd just shut down that piece of her heart, sealed it off and left it to die. Except it never had. It just stayed there, a suspended space that nothing could touch. Sometimes she wondered if Harm knew, or at least suspected, if that had been part of what had gone wrong, that although he'd gotten most of her, he hadn't gotten all.

And then she'd wonder if the problem was that the space existed or the reason it existed.

Harm hadn't understood her relationship with Clay, not that she'd helped him on that front. It had remained the one facet of their tempestuous and tortured path towards couplehood which stayed off limits, couldn't be joked about or discussed in the soft confessions post-coupling. Half the time _she_ hadn't understood her relationship with Clay, hadn't understood how she could so hate what he did and yet admire him for doing it, had never figured out how they had spent so little time together and yet when he was with her she felt known. And she'd never quite reconciled how even after knowing Germany was a utter fabrication, after she'd walked away from everything, she couldn't get rid of that damned Hummel figurine, when she didn't even like it that much.

That had been the first indication she and Harm weren't going to be all hearts and flowers from here on out, that they still had issues which couldn't be solved by a change of location and an engagement ring. She could still see Harm's face when he'd pulled the figurine out of the box miscellaneous things she'd had sent over from storage in D.C., blank and expressionless and utterly distant. Neither one of them had said a word as she took it out his hands and carefully place it in another box destined for the coat closet. To the best of her knowledge it was still in that coat closet, though she hadn't looked in a year and a half, but she knew that if she ever went back and found it gone, she'd never forgive Harm, and she was pretty sure Harm knew it, too.

Unwilling to go much further down the path of that particular idiosyncrasy, she punched the pillow and rolled over to face the wall.

Maybe the problem was that she _hadn't_ dissected it, hadn't killed it. Maybe because everything with Clay was just unanswered questions, she couldn't let them go.

He had been right about the drinking. She'd never asked, just taken the change at face value, never probed or questioned. Why was it she'd been able to pepper Tanveers with question after question, to open up before him all her fears about Clay, for Clay, but never once posed a single one of those questions to the man who so occupied her thoughts? She hadn't really even talked about Tanveers with Webb, other than mentioning that they'd worked together on the ship. But if she thought about it now, the drinking had subsided shortly after that, and she wondered if Webb had made a series of phone calls similar to the ones Tanveers had made about her.

This was the perfect opportunity to get her answers, or at least try. He was just outside that door, neither one of them could walk out as they had always been so fond of doing when things got too hurtful, too personal. She could at least have the satisfaction of knowing she'd asked the questions she'd never been brave enough to ask before.

If she had the courage to ask them now.

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Thanks for reading. As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated.

Panache


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Still not mine. Someone else's sandbox

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**CIA Safehouse  
Undisclosed Location  
Venice, Italy  
0216 Zulu**

Leaning back on the small couch, Webb rubbed a hand over his eyes and sighed. He'd been going over everything Adrienne had compiled on Eytinge for almost two hours, and nothing was coming to him. The man was fucking Teflon. Nothing ever stuck. One agency or another had been after him for years, this op was the closest they'd gotten. How had it gone so wrong? In his mind, he'd gone over every move he'd made, every vocal inflection, every reaction, every reference that had come up during their conversations, looking for what had tipped the arms-dealer off. There was nothing. It had been a near perfect run.

_Until he sent his men to kill you._

But what if he hadn't? Webb tensed as the stray thought flitted across his mind. Had he jumped to a conclusion? Were they coming for something else? He hadn't exactly waited around for them to provide him with a written statement of their intentions. They could have wanted anything. _Torture you . . . drug you . . . invite you for tea . . ._

Dammit, he didn't even know anymore.

No, that wasn't true. He knew. Down in his gut, in that place where his instincts and his training melded, he knew as certainly as he had that Alvaro was a mole or that the man who'd held Mac at knife point in that wretched Afghani detention camp wasn't well trained enough not to drop his guard. These questions, these doubts weren't his own. They were Sarah's. Unconsciously anticipating her need for moral and judicial certainty, for the kind of proof that could be offered up in a court of law, he'd been combing his mind for concrete facts, hard tangible pebbles that could be measured and balanced. There weren't enough.

But that didn't change the reality of his knowledge, and he had to stop letting it affect his evaluation of circumstances. He'd forgotten how she could do this to him, how her distrust of him and his motives, left him questioning too much, waiting too long for more intel that wasn't coming in the quest to build a case he shouldn't be trying to make. Already he'd wasted, what? Ten, fifteen minutes questioning choices already made.

It had to stop.

He felt her about three seconds before she reached for the door handle, which gave him five seconds to decide he wasn't going to move, or acknowledge her in any way. It was odd just sitting here, hand over his eyes, knowing she was looking at him, wondering what she saw in that moment. How often had they ever had the time, taken the time, just to watch each other? He could only think of once on his part.

It had been the morning after her not-quite declaration of love, cloaked in a confession of cold-blooded murder, after a night spent attempting to erase every harsh word with the actions of their bodies. She'd clung to sleep with the kind of ferocious tenacity born of a long separation, and he'd simply lain there watching her, taking in every line, every plane, for once not lured away by unread reports or unanswered emails, content simply to bask in the feeling of loving not just someone, but this hard, impossible woman.

"Aren't you going to tell me to go back to my cell?"

Not bothering to move, he replied, "Would it do me any good? I can't remember the last time you did something because I asked you to."

"Mmmm," Mac murmured in response, unable to help the tiny smile of acknowledgment that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Then because he was expecting it, she took a deliberate step into the room. Clay still didn't look at her, but in the cold, electronic glow of the laptop, she could see an answering smile flit briefly across his face. Pulled by the strange companionable moment, she came to the edge of the coffee table and looked down at him.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.

"You know somehow I thought Company accommodations would at least be more comfortable than shipboard bunks. Aren't you people supposed to do things first class all the way?"

"Ugly, vicious rumors. But if you want I'll lodge a formal complaint."

"Nah, don't bother. It's not like I plan on being a regular guest." She smiled as she said it, but he didn't see it and it didn't reach her voice. _Look at me, damn you. Just look at me._

Abruptly, he sat up, eyes now riveted to the computer screen. "Was there something you wanted, Sarah?"

_Nothing you can give me._ The words were there, right on the tip of her tongue, and three years ago, two hours ago, she would have voiced them without thought. But now, now it seemed so incredibly petty, and what's more untrue. "I thought I smelled coffee."

"Espresso actually." He nudged the delicate, blue-patterned espresso cup towards her, which she just now noticed was the only drink on the table, tumbler of scotch nowhere to be seen. "Feel free to make yourself a fresh cup."

When she didn't immediately pick it up, he continued on, "Don't worry, I can vouch for its quality. Sofie has a thing about beverages."

There was that name again, that implied familiarity, and with it that same sharp stab of something she didn't have a right to feel. Unwilling to examine it further, she picked up the cup and headed to the kitchen. "Can I get you one?"

Surprised both by the offer and the absence of rancor in her voice, he looked up. It was a mistake.

Sarah stood pondering the macchinetta, obviously unfamiliar with its workings. Apparently she'd rummaged through the drawers of the bedroom because she was wearing a long floral night gown that would have been perfectly appropriate on the little old lady Sofie had no doubt crafted from whole cloth to embody this place. On the statuesque Marine, however, it looked more than a little bit ridiculous—tiny ruffles at the high button up collar she hadn't bothered to close; a pale pink color he didn't think she'd ever worn before; and a hemline that although obviously meant to reach the ankles, hit her mid-calf. God, she was still so very beautiful.

Only too late, he realized he'd failed to respond to her offer. Sarah turned obviously intending to repeat the question, but something stopped her, froze the words on her tongue, and he wondered what she saw in his face at that moment, how much he gave away. He should have turned, gone back to the files and Eytinge and a mission he didn't have a chance in hell of salvaging, if for no other reason than it was safer, safer than continuing to look at her, continuing to let her see whatever had stilled her tongue. But he didn't . . . couldn't.

Thrown by the naked, unnamable emotion in Clay's eyes, Mac turned away to frown down at the stovetop espresso-maker, giving it her entire focus in an effort to shut out the man across the room. "So, you gonna show me how to use this thing?"

"Colonel Sarah MacKenzie admitting defeat? Was I asleep for the apocalypse?"

The tactic had worked so well that she didn't register his move off the couch, until he spoke, his breath a caress against the base of her neck. He was right behind her, a fraction too close, just a millimeter. With any other man she would have written it off as circumstance, the product of the ridiculously small kitchen, but not with Webb, not her attention to details spook. And Oh God had she just thought of him as hers? She _had_ to get out of this kitchen, away from him.

"Good to see your sarcasm's still intact, Webb."

He reached past her for the pot, and she jumped a little as his arm brushed hers. "Some things never change, Mac."

He wasn't talking about the sarcasm.

"And some things do." She shot back, pressing herself against the opposite counter, trying to get as far away from him as possible without actually yielding the kitchen.

Clay flashed her regretful smile, acknowledging she wasn't talking about sarcasm either. Then he turned to the sink and proceeded to disassemble, clean and reassemble the little aluminum pot with practiced ease.

"One shot or two?"

Mac bit her lip. One and she still might have a chance of sleeping, two and she was guaranteed to be up for the remaining nine hours. "Two."

He tensed almost imperceptibly. She doubted anyone else would have noticed, but then she doubted anyone else had invested so much energy in trying to find the man underneath the spy. Sometimes she was amazed she hadn't burnt out sooner.

"You still don't do anything halfway." Armor now back in place, Clay dutifully measured out the appropriate amount of espresso, placed the pot on the stove and stepped back into the living room.

_And you still don't actually talk about anything._ Mac thought, as he sat back down in front of the laptop, and proceeded to ignore her in favor of his one great love.

Had it been Harm, she would have experienced a little thrill of triumph at maintaining her territory, getting him to yield the kitchen. Even after the engagement, the move, their fights were always only half about the issue. The other half was always about dominance, the one-upmanship they could never seem to get away from. Really if she thought about it, it was probably worse in London, without the release valve of the court room, without the sense of self-worth she got from her work, everything was measured by whether she could hold her own against Harm, no matter how trivial the subject. God, she still blushed with shame at the vitriol they'd hurled at each other during the week of 'Seating Arrangement Smackdown '07' as Mattie had so quaintly and aptly coined it.

But Clay had always yielded ground too quickly for her to feel like she'd won anything, instead there was only a great plummeting emptiness that came from knowing nothing in their relationship had ever been important enough for him to really fight for. Even their relationship itself. Sure he'd made his case at Manderlay, but once she'd walked away, made her decision, that had been it. She never heard from him again. From a man as tenacious as Clayton Webb, the resigned acceptance had been a slap in the face. Now here they were locked in this tiny little apartment, and he'd still figured out how to walk away.

Struggling against her desire to just chuck something at that laptop, she drummed her fingers against the counter and waited for the espresso to brew, her resolve building with the steam.

_Not this time Webb. This time you do not get out of this so easily._

----

Squatting next to Meyer, Sofie braced herself against the bench and frowned down at the two bodies laid out in the boat's cramped cabin.

"Arrogant prick is accurate, I'll give him that." Meyer groused as he surveyed the neatly clustered bullet holes in the redhead's chest.

"Yeah, he's a regular Annie Oakely. How long is this going to take?"

"You want this done right or you want it done fast?"

"I want it done right and fast."

"Then get out of my hair and let me do my job."

Smiling, Sofie stood and dropped a quick kiss on her gruff forensic specialist's completely bald pate, before making her way out to the back of the boat. The moment she hit open air, her phone vibrated.

"For the love of God, Sam, tell me something good."

"Wilkerson's tour group was supposed to take a boat tour of the islands this morning. They had an open afternoon of shopping. Nobody knows if he got on the boat this morning. Apparently it's not uncommon for people to take the whole day to wander, so they don't take attendance and they don't wait." Sam rattled off without preamble. The horrible thing was, he would have told her they'd found her courier with the exact same amount of emotion.

"We're going to have to work on your understanding of good."

"I found Victor Galindez." Yup, absolutely no difference in vocal inflection. "He'll be here in four hours."

"What?!?" Surely, she'd heard wrong. Not that Sam had ever mumbled in his life, but there had to be a first time. Operatives did not just show up on her doorstep on a whim. Normal, reasonable, sane operatives stayed where they were and used a cell phone. Of course, Galindez worked with Webb . . . voluntarily, that probably should have given her a clue.

"He was in Salzburg. I told him it involved Webb and he said he'd come."

"He does know Webb's fine, right?" Now, she got an emotion, a tiny sigh of exasperation that said 'why are you questioning my abilities?'

"Yes. But when I mentioned Ms. MacKenzie, he became insistent."

"When you mentioned . . ." Sofie closed her eyes and counted to ten, then twenty. Then just for good measure, she did it again in Italian.

"He had the clearance. You asked me to contact him. You did not specify that you wanted certain information withheld." If he had just sounded the least bit defensive, she might have forgiven him. Sam never got defensive. Sam never got anything.

"I am hanging up now." Not waiting for her assistant to respond, she snapped the phone closed.

Fuck this was what came from caring. Horrible, complicated messes, agents showing up in places she didn't want them, and a migraine. Never again. She didn't care how good the sex was. How interesting the conversation. Absolutely. Never. Again.

----

Sarah was trying to drive him insane.

What's more, she was succeeding.

After pouring her espresso, she'd come and curled up on the opposite end of the couch, and for the past fifteen minutes she hadn't said anything, or done anything, just proceeded to sit there sipping her espresso, watching him. It was disconcertingly cozy, and he couldn't take it anymore.

"What?" he snapped, whipping his head around to glare at her.

Shifting on the couch, she leaned forward to set her cup on the coffee table and gave him an enigmatic smile. "Nothing. Don't let me bother you."

The move brought her a foot closer and damn her if it wasn't completely deliberate. _Don't let me bother you, my ass_ She didn't just bother him. She unraveled him. He could smell her now. Earlier for those few brief moments in the kitchen, he'd been able to ignore it, but now the scent of her hair, her skin, seemed to be the only thing his brain could process. Different somehow, made foreign by rosewater bath products more appropriate for Sofie's imaginary eighty year old, but then after three years what did he know? Maybe Harm liked her to smell like an English garden, truly preferred the light, delicate florals, to the spicy exotic oils Sarah used to let him stroke over every erogenous zone, anointing her like a biblical queen. God he hoped so. The thought of her sharing that ritual with Rabb made him ill.

Stifling a groan, and trying desperately to put all thoughts of that ugly scenario, or really any scenario that involved Sarah naked, out of his mind, he dropped his head in his hands and shook it back and forth.

"Is it really that bad?"

A strained, horrible little laugh bubbled up and escaped his lips before he could stop it. What she was asking about and what he was thinking about were such completely different things, and yet the answer was exactly the same. Of course it was that bad, he shuddered to imagine it getting worse.

She brushed her fingers along the back of his hand, and her touch was so tender, so close to what he wanted, that he couldn't take it. In a move that surprised both of them, he twisted his hand up to capture her wrist.

"What are you doing, Sarah?"

Again that strange, almost resigned smile. "It's called talking, Clay."

His eyes dropped to the hand that still held her wrist, to his thumb, which seemed to be stroking her pulse point almost of its own accord. Following his gaze, she sighed. Then gently, but deliberately reclaiming her hand, she moved back to the far end of the couch.

Still, she didn't relent. "We're here for another nine hours. Don't you think we should at least be able to talk to each other?"

"I think we could make it."

She just looked at him.

"Fine." He leaned back against the arm of the couch, and gazed back in challenge. "Should I really return the place setting I purchased, or are you and Harm just taking another detour to prolong the anticipation?"

The glare she nailed him with could have frozen all of hell. "Do you even know how to stop being an absolute bastard?"

"It's been a long time, Sarah. I might not remember." He smirked.

"Try, Clay." Her voice was soft and deadly serious.

Lord he didn't want to do this, not that he was even sure what this was, but his instincts for danger were still intact, and whatever was going on had set off every last warning bell. But there was something in Sarah's eyes, ten layers deep, and probably imagined, and it didn't even matter whether it was real, the hope of it was enough to make him throw caution to the wind.

"Okay."

"Okay?" It was her turn to be disconcerted.

"Go ahead. Talk. Say your piece, ask your questions. Hell, I'll even make a go at honesty."

Mac jerked her head away as though she'd been slapped, her features tightening into a rigid mask. No, apparently he did not know how to stop being a complete and utter bastard. Still he waited, desperate to know if there really was something she'd wanted to say, or if this was just the product of boredom and accelerated cabin-fever.

Nothing came.

Angry now, he rose up, one knee on the cushions, foot on the floor, and leaned forward, trapping her against the couch, heedless of the invasion of her personal space. He rasped, "What is it you want from me?"

Involuntarily, Mac closed her eyes, unable to take the full frontal assault of raw desperation in both his voice and his gaze simultaneously. If she just reached out, just pulled him to her, let herself get lost in the momentary recreation of all that had been good between them, she knew he'd let her, and it would even be a kind of answer. But it wasn't the whole answer, she wasn't even sure she knew the whole answer.

Clay searched her face, looking for . . . what? Whatever it was, he didn't find it. After a beat, he pushed away from her with a sigh of disgust. "I'll work in the other room."

At the sound of the laptop clicking shut, she found her voice. "Don't."

"Why not?"

When she didn't answer, he heaved another sigh and got up from the couch.

"Stop walking away from me!" The words seemed to come from another place, and she wasn't even conscious of reaching for the espresso cup until it crashed into the doorframe, inches from Clay's head, the delicate china shattering to pieces, the remnants of her drink staining the wood as it dripped down the wall. Whirling on his heel, Webb stared at her as though she'd lost her mind. Hell what did she know? Maybe she had.

After a beat, he smiled, a quirked, sardonic, empty smile that was truly awful in its bitterness. "It's my turn."

"You really don't know how to do this, do you?"

"Do what? Tell me what we're doing, Sarah, and I'll read up on it, get the briefing."

Furious at his calm, unaffected demeanor, at the fact he could play at not caring so effectively, she lurched up off the couch and advanced on him. "Why? So you can fake that emotion, too? You know I don't even know why I'm surprised. After all, it runs in the family. Your mother is a consummate actress."

"Stop."

Were she thinking the slightest bit clearly, she would have heard the warning in his voice, would have heeded it, acknowledged that this was a place they shouldn't go, but this had festered for too long, and the release was too welcome. "I comforted her! I stood outside that morgue in Hawaii and told myself I had to be strong, that I was helping her by being strong. And she let me! Knowing you were alive, knowing what its like to lose someone like that. She let me go through that hell alone."

"It wasn't her choice, Sarah."

"And I'm sure it really tore her up inside to do it. Face it Webb, you were raised by a cold bitch with ice water in her veins."

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back, but it was too late. Drawing in a sharp breath, Webb took one deliberate step towards her, and for the first time in her life, she thought he might hit her. Maybe if he hadn't still the laptop in hand he would have. Something dark and fierce had passed through his eyes in that moment, and it scared her in a way that few things did. Was this why he always walked away? Was he afraid of what would happen otherwise?

Still she stood her ground. Let him try it. It would just confirm everything, make this all easier.

But he didn't. He just stood there looking at her, searching her face. She didn't know what it was he saw there, but all of the sudden his entire demeanor changed. The rigid, whipcord tension leaked out of him, and he took a shaky step back, running a hand through hair, his face the picture of incredulous disbelief. "Christ, you really want to do this, don't you?"

Want wasn't the right word. No she didn't want to do this at all. They could break each other like this. But she needed it, like nothing else in her life she needed this, and maybe Clay needed it, too. And though she couldn't voice it, couldn't make herself that vulnerable in front of him, in the end it didn't matter, because her silence only seemed to confirm whatever suspicion he'd formed. With a curt nod of his head, he walked past her and set the laptop back down on the table with exaggerated care. Then he looked back up, pinning her with a gaze that was half-challenge, half-warning. "Well then Colonel, ask your questions, cauterize the wound."

- + - + - + - + -

Thanks for reading

Comments and Criticisms always appreciated. Love to know what people think.

Panache


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: As always not mine.

- + - + - + - + -

A10

Somewhere near the Austria/Italy border

0309 Zulu

Though his mama might consider it blasphemous, Victor Galindez couldn't help once again thanking God for iPods and car adapters. It was late, he was tired, and were it not for the Man in Black admitting that he "guessed things happen that way" he probably would have missed the last turn and not been found until some cycling tour group got lost. Johnny Cash just wasn't all that prevalent on late night European radio.

He shouldn't be doing this. He knew it, knew he was going to catch hell for it when word trickled to Kershaw that he'd left a perfectly good cover in Salzburg to drop himself in the middle of an op where he wasn't needed and, if the three calls he'd forwarded to voicemail were anything to go by, wasn't particularly wanted.

Well, Candice shouldn't have called if she didn't want him. Really, she shouldn't have called one way or the other. But that, he had discovered, was the dichotomy about working with Clayton Webb. You stopped worrying about such shoulds and shouldn'ts. For as deeply and unflinchingly loyal as Webb was to the CIA, Victor had come to realize the quintessential Company man actually cared extraordinarily little about the agency's rules. He had seen Webb bend them, twist them, and throw them completely out the window, when it served his purpose or his somewhat murky principles. And people who worked with him long enough, inevitably started to do the same.

Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time to 'Ring of Fire', Galindez let his thoughts drift over the man with whom he'd worked on and off the last six years, developing a strange, uneasy partnership that had morphed into an even stranger friendship. He hadn't been surprised when Webb had showed up in his barracks almost three years ago, throwing his already packed duffel at him with little more than a brusque "I hope you still remember how to do more than take orders." Like anyone who worked at JAG, he'd gotten used to the way the CIA agent simply showed up and threw your life into turmoil without so much as a by your leave. And he hadn't been surprised when after three months of crisscrossing the globe, bouncing from his still viable contacts in South America, to Webb's nearly-decimated network in the Pacific Rim, and their piece-meal connections in the Middle East, the spy had looked over at him across a very dirty and extremely rank hut in an Indonesian fishing village and offered him a life filled with rank huts and good hotels, a precarious, fragile life of good work done in a dirty way. He even hadn't been surprised when a month later he actually said yes.

What had surprised him was Webb himself. It took him six weeks to see it, to realize the veneer of tight control and cold indifference was thinly painted at best, but once he did he wondered how he could have missed it. Something had cracked Webb, broken him open and removed an essential piece, leaving a man with will but no spirit, determination but no desire. Even in Paraguay, beaten and bloodied and clinging to life he'd fought, but this man . . . this man would have gotten in the back of that ambulance. He wasn't suicidal. He just simply didn't care, one way or the other.

Once they were back in D.C., it hadn't taken much to piece together what, or rather who, had happened. After all, he'd been a cop, a JAG investigator, and he'd seen the way the spy looked at Colonel MacKenzie in Paraguay. It didn't exactly plumb the depths of his skills to connect the dots between the stalwart insistence that they didn't need to involve JAG for this or that, the slight chill in the air when he mentioned who he was working for to Commander Rabb at an embassy function, and the quiet warning Webb had given him the night he'd accepted the offer—"You're going to lose people doing this job."

He'd never elaborated, and Victor had never asked. To borrow a favorite phrase from the other man, he simply didn't need to know. Some stories belonged to no one but the people who lived them.

It would have been different if he thought whatever had happened between his current superior and his former one meant Webb couldn't be trusted to keep his personal apathy from bleeding over into the mission. But the three months they'd spent together had already put to rest any doubts he had on that front. If anything Webb had attacked his work with such zeal it made Galindez worry he might take unnecessary risks. But best he could tell, the spy never did. In the end he supposed that would have required a level of desperation Clayton Webb didn't have, simply because he didn't feel passionately enough about anything to be that desperate.

Years later Kershaw had confirmed that his assignment to Webb for those three months had less to do with his knowledge or contacts, and more with the fact that the spy did care whether he made it back alive. He'd been there to make Webb cautious, to impose a sense of self-preservation the man no longer felt for himself. It probably would have bothered Galindez more if he hadn't worked it out for himself midway through the mission, if Webb hadn't indeed saved his life among the cinder-block buildings of Baghdad. And even though he'd repaid the debt many times over, all the while racking up new ones, even though it might be Webb who was now in the red, somehow they just never got around to doing the accounting.

So here he was merging onto the A2 at four thirty in the damn morning.

----

CIA Safehouse

Undisclosed Location

Venice, Italy

0314 Zulu

Mac knew she was staring. She didn't care. Nor it seemed did Clay. He simply stared back, letting her look, letting her measure his offer, determine if she really believed he'd tell her the truth for once. Based on experience, she had every reason not to. Webb could make you believe anything for a time, and you'd travel blindly down the path of his choosing until you bumped into so many half-truths and omissions and out right lies that you simply had no choice but to stop believing everything . . . even the things you so desperately prayed were true.

She bet the 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' got left out of his childhood education.

But the way he was looking at her now, not with sincerity or compassion or anything so nice, just simple, pure warning, a look that said 'don't do this' and 'get out now,' it was hard enough, cold enough, to make her think this time she'd get the truth. And she'd probably wish she hadn't. Or maybe she was wrong and Webb was just enough of a gamesman to know that was the only way she'd believe. But hey, she'd never been very good at learning from her mistakes. Why start now?

"No lies, Clay."

"Then don't press for answers I can't give, Sarah."

The corners of her mouth twitched in acceptance, and he sat back spreading his hands in invitation. Now that the boundaries had been set, the rules established, the entire field was open to her. She could ask anything.

Overwhelmed by the sudden surfeit of riches, she found herself paralyzed,. There were thousands of questions she wanted to ask him, and really only one—'Why didn't you trust me?' It was the beginning, the middle, and the end, the only question that mattered. And precisely because it was so important, because it meant everything, she couldn't ask it now. After that there would be nothing left to say.

And she wanted to say . . . so much . . . so many things, she couldn't choose, so in the end she wound up asking a question she told herself didn't matter at all.

"Who's Sofie?"

A fractional pause -- she'd managed to surprise him -- then "She's the Station Chief for Northern Italy."

Mac rolled her eyes because they both knew that hadn't actually been the question. He was stalling for time, regrouping. "And you and her are?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Colleagues, friends, sexual companions . . ."

Well, that confirmed one suspicion. She looked down at her hands, fighting not to display her turmoil at finding the answer had mattered after all. "Does she make you happy?"

"Why does it matter?" Clay shot back, his eyes narrowing.

In an effort to deflect his sharply knowing gaze, she heaved her shoulders in a half-hearted move neither one of them believed. But then the bargain hadn't been for her honesty. "Maybe I just want to know how you are."

Sighing he ran a hand over his face, and Mac tried not to notice how tired he looked. "I'm fine. I'm here. Still alive. Still very good at my job. Still all the things you couldn't stand."

"But you're not happy." Did she have to sound so damn satisfied? It made her feel like a harpy.

"Whatever I am or am not, has extraordinarily little to do with Sofie," he snapped, apparently just as irritated with her little expression of triumph as she. "Look," his voice softened. "I enjoy her company. I care about what happens to her, but . . . does she make me happy?" He shook his head slowly back and forth, in a way that was just a little too similar to Harm when he was about to correct some great misperception she had of the world.

"What? Are you going to start telling me how you determine your own happiness and first you need to be happy with who you are?"

"You and Harm have had this fight." It wasn't a question, so she took a page out of his book and chose not to volunteer anymore information. It didn't matter he had his answer. "Sofie and I," he sighed again, "it's just not the type of association where you let the other have that much control."

Association, control, such cold words, such Clay words, she snorted in derision. "Like you'd ever let someone have that much control."

"You did."

The words slipped from his tongue so naturally, simple and guileless, without recrimination or challenge, that she thought at first he didn't realize he'd spoken them aloud. But when she looked up to meet his gaze, there was no shock, no slow-dawning realization of horror. The eyes which met hers were as steady and certain as they'd been that day at the detention camp. Involuntarily, Mac felt her throat constrict, the pinprick of tears at the corners of her eyes as the loss suddenly washed over her anew, and she jerked her head away.

God, she'd really walked into that one! It wasn't fair. Three years had gone by. It shouldn't matter at all, but it did. She remembered words once spoken in so much anger, 'You don't have what it takes to make me happy.' It had been a lie. He had made her happy. Oh, he'd made her angry as all get out, made her rage, made her lonely and hurt, and yet at times he'd made her feel so unlike herself, alive and passionate and confident, like a different Sarah MacKenzie who only came out when Clay was around. Sometimes she missed that Sarah, wished Harm could have met her.

Warm hands slid along her shoulders and down her arms, as Clay came up behind her and gently, carefully, turned her into his embrace, handling her like a grenade, as though afraid at any moment she'd go off, wounding him beyond repair.

He needn't have worried. She was past fighting him or this, past trying to pretend for her sake, for Harm's sake, that everything had meant nothing, that she didn't know down to the second exactly how long it had been since she'd let him touch her like this. It didn't matter. This was a moment out of time, separate and unreal, and when the twelve hours were up, when the clock ran down, probably nothing that was said or done here would make a damn bit of difference. So she just let go, pressed her face against the curve his neck, let herself enjoy being held, and tried not to cry.

"We have all night, Sarah. Come sit down."

"I thought we agreed a long time ago you'd stop trying to shut me up." But she let him lead her to the couch, sit them both down, hip to hip, her hand clasped in his. For a moment she thought they might stay like that, and she almost let her head drop to his shoulder, but the eerie familiarity of the posture, the memory of the night he'd said 'I love you,' seemed to wash over them at the same time. Giving her a small, regretful smile, Clay got up to sit across from her on the coffee table.

In the end, it made little difference. The table was close enough that his thigh still brushed hers, and for some reason neither moved to release the other's hand. Instead, they simply sat there, strangely intimate and yet separate. Idly, Mac trailed a thumb over his knuckles. She could still see Paraguay in his hands, burn scars fainter now, but still there, still a testament and a warning—it takes much to break this man; it takes much to break through to him.

With the patience and control that made him so valuable an operative, so good a lover, and so infuriating a companion, he simply waited.

"You promised not to lie to me tonight, Clay."

He went rigid. "And I haven't."

Mac shook her head and sighed. "I didn't make you happy. You were miserable that whole year. Maybe at the end it got better, but . . . don't tell me now that being with me made a difference."

She made to remove her hand, but he stopped her, clutching at her fingers with an intensity she'd forgotten. Always in her memory his touch had been temperate, removed, Webb holding back pieces of himself, never fully invested, but she remembered this. He'd touched her like this before.

"It did. It did make a difference." At the words, she started to turn away unwilling to believe, but he reached up and captured her face, forcing her to stay facing him. "No! You wanted the truth. You demanded it. You don't get to now pick and choose what that is."

Still holding her hostage, he pressed on, his voice rough with anger. "You made me happy."

"I didn't." She was begging now.

"You did," he insisted. Pressing his forehead to hers, he continued, "I know I didn't do a very good job of showing it, but you were the best thing about that year."

"That's not exactly a ringing endorsement."

"Maybe not, but it's true." The anger had ebbed, softening his grip until it was almost tender, and she could hear a smile in his voice. Mac brought her hands up to his intending to pull them away, but she wound up just holding them there, wrapping her fingers around his.

"It was an awful year."

"Not all of it."

"So much, though."

"And you think it would have been better apart?"

"I don't know," she sighed and sat back. He didn't resist, just let their hands drop to her lap. "I honestly don't know anymore. Sometimes I guess . . . didn't you ever think it would have been easier? If we had just gone our separate ways? If it had all just never happened?"

"Everyday we were together." Mac snapped her head up to stare at him, but he wasn't looking at her. She wasn't sure he was looking at anything right now. "It was hard to be with you." Absently, he brushed a kiss along her knuckles, as though trying to soften the blow of his words. It didn't, but it quieted the automatic protest on her tongue. He was working towards something, and while in her opinion she owed him damn little, hearing him out just might be the one unpaid debt she had left. Besides this was what she wanted, wasn't it? To know what had happened, why it had happened.

"You're right so much of that year was difficult and sometimes, a lot of the time, I thought I'd made a mistake trying to be with you, thinking I could have that, especially then. God, it was the worst possible time to start a relationship. I don't know what the hell I was thinking . . ." He shook his head, negating the words even as he said them. "No, I take that back. I know exactly what I was thinking. You were giving me an opportunity and I'd be damned if I didn't take advantage of it. I just . . . didn't consider all the angles."

"You make me sound like one of your ops."

"Maybe I would have handled it better if you were." He released her hands with a wan smile, and she found herself oddly bereft at the loss.

"So what was the angle you missed?"

Instead of answering, he got up from the table and began to wander around the apartment lightly touching things, a picture here, a lace antimacassar there, when his hand landed on the empty bottle of scotch he froze. Mac watched as he rubbed a thumb over the lip, a longing caress she knew all too well. "It doesn't make anything better, does it?"

"But it does make it easier for awhile."

"So what? Being with me was so horrible you had to escape into a bottle?"

"No, being with you was wonderful."

"But hard. Maybe even impossible."

"Dammit, you're not listening!"

"You're not making any sense! I made you happy, but you thought it would have been easier if we were apart. Being with me was so wonderful that you started drinking to handle it."

"I didn't start it to handle our relationship. I started because . . ." He trailed off, still searching for words.

"Because why, Clay? What was so terrible, so hard about being with me?"

A shudder tore through him, and he dropped his head to rest against the fist holding the bottle. "I couldn't turn it off."

The confession was little more than a bare whisper, but she would have heard it over D.C. traffic. She started to say something. She didn't know what, probably some meaningless platitude, but he was past hearing. Words were pouring out in a rush no longer contained by the dam of his self-control. "I wasn't prepared for that. I just . . ." He turned and leaned back against the counter, still holding the empty bottle, his gaze focused on some imagined spot in the distance. "I've been with the CIA for seventeen years, and I've spent sixteen of those years coming home to an empty apartment and no one but my mother. There wasn't anyone to demand anything of me. You don't have to feel much under those circumstances. But with you . . ."

"With me what?" she prompted, uncertain she really wanted to hear the answer.

"It was like I'd lived in black and white for years, and you brought color . . . but I didn't get to choose. I didn't get to just love you . . ."

Such pretty words . . . and said by another man to another woman, they could have been romantic, a declaration life had changed for the better. But she hadn't given him fields of flowers, or sunsets. She'd painted blood on pavement a brighter red, made Sadik's eyes come to him as the bitter scorched earth color they truly were, made his nightmares more vivid, more real, and for salvation, escape, he'd turned not to her, but a bottle, a drug that could do what she could not . . . beat back the images, mute the colors, and soften the edges until they became unreal again.

"You let your armor down," she whispered, suddenly tossed back to a different time, sitting across from a different spy.

His features twisted in a wry smile of acknowledgment. "You see the problem."

"Only in the CIA would being human be considered problem," Mac muttered, and suddenly cold, grabbed the afghan off the back of the couch to curl up in the corner, facing away from him.

Clay didn't say anything in response. She hadn't really expected him to. He'd long ago stopped trying to defend his job to her. Yet one more fight he didn't think was worth having. Instead there was only the soft clink of glass as he set the bottle back down, and the quiet opening and closing of cabinets. For a moment she thought he might be looking for another bottle of scotch, but there was only the rush of water and the snap of a towel.

Turning her head slightly, she watched as Webb moved over to the bedroom doorway and went about erasing the traces of her outburst from the woodwork, obviously not intending to volunteer another word. Why had she done that? Why did she always do that? It wasn't that she didn't understand, more like she understood all too well. Attacking his job, his lifestyle was instinctual like a porcupine standing its quills on end, wounding to keep from getting hurt.

Sighing, she ran her hands over her face and up into her hair. Lacing her fingers behind her neck, she tried to find . . . if not the right words, at least better ones. Still they came out wrong, got twisted in her throat. "I never understood how you could choose to do what you do. How anyone could choose a profession where you have to be half dead just to stay alive. What kind of life is that?"

Clay didn't pause, didn't turn. "I wouldn't know. My parents sold me to the Company at birth. I'm told it was a moving ritual complete with blood oaths and Satanic chants."

The vicious, acid sarcasm of his retort warned her off from making any further comment. She'd pushed as far as he felt she had a right to, any further and they'd probably start losing more china.

Without a word, she got up from the couch and coming to kneel beside him, reached out to extract the towel from his nerveless fingers. Clay watched blankly as she took over wiping down the walls, then with a sigh he rolled away to sit back against the wall, arms propped on bent knees. Mac just kept cleaning, kept wiping away at the woodwork long past the point when she could actually see a stain. Finally, when she had just about given up hope he'd say anything, he spoke.

"We do it because we believe. Just as much as any Marine or JAG officer, we believe in the necessity of what we do, and we're prepared to give our lives to our country to do it. Sometimes the price is steeper than death." He paused as though waiting for her to contradict him. When she didn't he continued. "Besides . . . it doesn't always turn out that way. Not for everyone. It didn't for my parents."

A wistful longing had crept into his voice, and Mac sat back on her heels as the realization hit her—he'd hoped for his parent's miracle to repeat itself, had seen his chance in her, in them. She didn't know why it surprised her. For all his duplicity, Clay had always been upfront about his intentions. She'd been the one to waffle, to dance uncertainly around exactly she wanted from him, what she'd been prepared to give in exchange. How had his parents done it? Maybe Porter Webb had simply been prepared to suffer through what Sarah MacKenzie had not—the constant fear, the never-knowing, always wondering. And though she told herself it was because she refused to settle, refused to be treated so poorly, a part of her wondered if perhaps the diminutive grand dame of high society might indeed have been made of sterner stuff than she.

"I'm not your mother." It came out half-defensive, half-apologetic.

To her surprise, Webb laughed, a breathy exhale of melancholy amusement. "No. I don't think you ever left any doubt on that front." He tugged gently on the tail of towel she still held, turning her towards him. "But then, I never wanted you to be. I loved Sarah MacKenzie."

"Because I'm tough and I don't need much."

"I meant it as a compliment." He put a hand on her mouth to forestall her protest. "You are tough and you don't need much. I just obviously couldn't give you what you did need."

Before she could stop him, he leaned over and replaced his fingers with his mouth. Soft and brief, his kissed her without demand or hope, just a wordless apology he'd waited three years to say.

Then it was over as suddenly as it had begun, and before she had a chance to respond one way or the other, he got up from the floor and walked past her into the bedroom.

- + - + - + - + -

Thanks for reading. All feedback is appreciated and welcome.

Panache


	6. Chapter 6

**CIA Safehouse**

**Undisclosed Location**

**Venice, Italy**

**0406 Zulu**

He'd been staring at his reflection in the scratched mirror for so long he'd lost track of time, somehow unable to look away from the hard etched lines, the tired eyes, his ever more prominent widow's peak. It was funny how he felt no different, looked no different. He always thought that should bother him more than it did, these times when he'd taken a life, or in this case two, and yet strangely went on with little more than a hiccup on his psyche, with no hint of the monstrous deed on his face. If it weren't for the fact Father Time continued to take his pound of flesh in spades, he would have thought it Basil Hallward his mother had commissioned to paint the family portrait, gone stalking the catacombs of the house at Great Falls for the chance to look upon the true countenance of Clayton Webb.

It didn't always happen this way. Beautiful Teresa Marcello still came to him in his dreams, haloed in flowers, her perfect skin marred only by a single bullet hole. Sometimes he would turn a corner and for an instant see Tommy Connor's bright smile and cold eyes in the face of a stranger. And even now as he stared into the mirror, the ghost of Simon Tanveer, charming and dedicated and brutally disillusioned, stood just at his shoulder, mocking him, a keepsake of his failures both personal and professional, his own special reminder of how close he danced to the edge.

_When does the killing stop?_

_It's what we do, Sarah, people like Tanveer and me._

Sometimes he wondered if that was really the moment he lost Sarah completely. Stung not by her anger, but her point of attack, he'd said the words to provoke, grouped himself with the mercenary assassin in an effort at verbal chastisement. But there'd been too much truth in his words, he'd seen it in her eyes, heard it his own voice . . . _people like Tanveer and me_ . . . and he knew she saw little difference between him and the man who'd held her at gunpoint, what's more he wasn't always sure she'd been wrong. There were times, like now, when he met Simon's mordant charcoal eyes in the mirror only to find himself looking into his own calculating hazel ones.

Tearing his gaze away, he turned and stripped off his jacket and oxford in sharp jerky movements. Hanging them up on back of the bathroom door, he stretched and sighed, momentarily contemplating a coward's escape into the shower, knowing Sarah would never chase him so far, though he wouldn't put it past her to sit on the toilet and trap him there. He wasn't thrilled at the idea of becoming a prune, nor did he relish the thought of getting clean only to put his same clothes back on. So no, shower was out.

Instead he made due with simply splashing cold water on his face and neck.

"Didn't."

At the sound of Sarah's voice, he stilled and reached out blindly for the towel. Damn. He really hadn't expected her to come chasing after him quite so soon. Still patting his face dry he cast one cautious eye to the mirror to find her standing in the doorway to the bathroom, arms crossed, the brown eyes that looked back at him sharp and knowing, ready to pierce through any sidestep, any dissembling.

Not that it mattered. He didn't have the slightest clue what she was talking about, and he was fresh out of avoidance or pretense anyway. Still, he could have used the respite from her inexplicable need for brutal honesty. Lowering his gaze, he pressed his whole face into the towel, and ventured, "Sorry?"

"Didn't," she repeated the oblique statement. "You didn't give me what I needed."

Dropping the damp towel back on the bar, he turned and quirked an eyebrow at her. "We're arguing semantics now?"

Mac shrugged resignedly. "Maybe. Maybe that's all we have left to argue about."

It wasn't that he'd been expecting something more, the kiss he'd pressed against her lips had been meant as a goodbye he'd never wanted to say—still didn't want to say if he were honest with himself—but the declaration hurt all the same. Fighting not to betray exactly how much, to keep his Achilles heel of irrational hope hidden lest she exploit it, he crossed his arms and leaned back against the edge of the sink, yielding her the floor.

After a beat, she pulled herself together every inch of her becoming the JAG Chief of Staff, even in that ridiculous nightgown, and he tamped down on a vicious little smile of triumph at that. Sarah always thought herself so honest and forthright, adopted the same what 'you see is what you get' mentality as her partner, but it was her greatest lie. There was no one Lt. Colonel Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie, anymore than there had ever been one Clayton Webb. She was like a matryoshka, one of those Russian nesting dolls, crack open each shell only to find a new one inside, different versions of the same woman, each occupying a smaller and smaller space, each more deeply buried than the last.

He'd been attracted to that from the beginning—the mystery of her—liked the slow and steady process of opening her up, only to find a new Sarah beneath, thought he could spend a lifetime getting to know all the women nestled inside, stupidly thought they might enjoy meeting his different faces. And in the end maybe some of them had. Maybe there was a Sarah, one she kept at least four layers down who had actually loved him, or at least a version of him. The problem had always been that their outer shells—the Marine and the Spy—the largest versions that could swallow all the others whole, that had glared at each across Chedwiggen's office, a hallway in Columbia, a dusty road in Paraguay, those two had never gotten along.

It was the senior JAG who spoke now, the consummate litigator, detached, dispassionate, building her case in the trial of Clayton Webb brick by impenetrable brick. "It was never that you couldn't give me what I needed, Clay. It was that you didn't. You chose other things, chose your job, and maybe now I'm willing to admit you might have chosen your country, too. I'm not saying it wasn't the right choice. I've stopped trying to work it out. But it was a choice and you made it without me."

He didn't say anything, because really what was there to say? They could go round and round about duty and necessity, have-to's and choices that aren't really choices at all, and three years ago he would have, would have readily held a mirror up to the hypocrisy of this statement coming from her, from Mac who'd given her life, found her life, in the Marines, semper-fi, God, country and corps, etc. etc. But the woman he would have said that to wasn't standing here, she'd gone, and in her place was a woman he'd never met who would give up that innate sense of self-identity to be with the man she loved, to follow him across an ocean. He didn't know whether that made her weak, or far stronger than his Sarah ever was, but he was intrigued all the same.

"I just didn't want you thinking there was nothing you could have done to keep me," she continued, a strange emotion in her voice, so that he couldn't tell whether the words were intended to soothe him with the idea that he really had stood a chance, or just rub salt into the wound because the loss hadn't been inevitable, because he'd truly fucked it all up.

Wanting to know the answer to that, to meet this new Sarah, to open her up one more time and see if he could finally reach the center piece, her core that hid nothing else beneath it, he went on the offensive for the first time that night. And like any self-respecting covert operations agent, he went at it sideways.

"Does Rabb?"

"What?" She looked over at him in confusion. Dammit, apparently the oblique nonsequitors were contagious. He clarified.

"Does Rabb make the right choices? Does he give you what you need?" He hadn't meant them to, but somehow the questions came out provoking, intimating at things he really didn't have a right to know . . . but he wanted to . . . Lord how he wanted to know where things stood between those two, to understand how they'd gotten that way.

Harmon Rabb had been the Damoclean sword over their relationship, suspended above their happiness, a constant reminder of his precarious position in Sarah's life. A part of him had always anticipated that thread snapping. Even as he'd dug himself deeper, let himself fall, he'd known it couldn't end well. It was perhaps one of the reasons he'd never slowed down, despite Sarah's obvious displeasure, despite Kershaw's offer of something a little tamer. He'd been making contingency plans, preparing for the inevitable moment when he didn't have Sarah anymore, and he needed something to keep him going. Work had always done it before.

Even when, in what had to be one of the more ironic twists of his life, he'd lost her not to Rabb, but to the very thing meant to provide solace when she was gone, he'd taken a small measure of comfort in the idea that he'd simply sped up the process, hurried the inevitable. Yet, here she was, some three years later, Harm no where to be seen, apparently left at the proverbial altar. How had that happened? Despite the naval aviator's startling ability to screw up relationships almost as spectacularly as he did, Webb always thought it would have been different with Mac. In contrast to the laissez-faire approach Harm took with other women, with Mac he'd been cautious, careful to a fault, and even now Clay had trouble believing that having finally gotten Sarah, he would have reverted to his old ways. Not with this woman.

Which meant what, exactly? He'd like to think her being here meant the relationship had ended, the strings finally cut. But his expertise in deception didn't extend to self-delusion. Harm was no more gone from Mac's life than Sarah was from his. He could see it in the way she was shutting down, methodically, systematically walling off the pieces of herself still inextricably tied with her partner. If he let her continue would anything other than the outer shells be left?

Desperate to stop the process, he shoved his hands in his pockets and tsked in mock sadness. "It wasn't supposed to be a hard question, Sarah."

That got her, and she flinched just a little before the walls slammed down. "Harm is irrelevant to the issue."

It was the lawyer talking, so he let the spy answer. "Acquiring and collating all available information. Go in without sufficient intel and people get hurt."

"This isn't about Harm." She reiterated, jaw set, eyes sparking, and God, he could see that some part of her actually believed it. "We are not talking about him."

"Fine." And it was. It was perfectly fine if she wanted to take her ball and go home, because it meant he didn't have to play anymore either. He didn't do one-way streets when it came to information unless he was the one on the receiving end. "Then I guess we're done talking."

Pushing off the sink, he moved to the door, reached for his oxford, and pulled it back on over his t-shirt. It was a cold, dismissive gesture that harkened back to dozens of interrupted nights, abbreviated interludes, of them never having enough time to say everything they should have. Only this time, when he turned to go, Sarah was blocking the doorway, hands braced on the frame.

"Move Sarah."

"No," she refused, determination to continue this evident on her face.

"I have work to do."

"You're lying."

"You're interfering with Company business."

That actually made her smile, pleased and triumphant. "Good."

Mimicking her posture, so that they now stood face to face, hands mere inches apart on wood, he met her smile with a smirk of his own. "Are you going to make me move you?"

"Think you can take me, Webb?"

Instead of answering, he pulled back slightly and raked his eyes down her body in deliberate evaluation, intentionally echoing that moment in Chegwidden's office when it could be said the whole fiasco of their relationship had started. He'd meant the move to throw her off, get her to back down, but he'd miscalculated, forgotten how good they were at pushing each others buttons like this, how good it felt. Mostly, he'd forgotten that she'd liked it, too.

Mac's triumphant grin slipped into something more comfortable, a coquettish, playful curve of her lips he hadn't seen in years except in his dreams. Suddenly the air between them was charged, electrified with something other than anger, and it was taking just about everything in him not to simply say to hell with it and kiss her. As mercurial as she was right now, he figured it was even money whether she'd sock him again, or kiss him back, either way he'd be out of the bathroom, and if was the latter . . . he could make out the bed just over her shoulder, five maybe six feet away max. He slid his eyes back to hers and moved his hands ever so slightly, so that their fingertips were just touching across the span of the door frame. Sarah didn't move away, if anything the index finger on her left hand swept along his right in silent invitation, and dammit, did she know what she was doing to him?

Yes, he decided. She knew exactly what she was doing, and he knew a diversionary tactic when he saw one.

Screw it.

Not giving himself time to rethink or her to react, he stepped forward, right hand closing over her wrist, left sliding along the curve of her waist, almost as though in preparation for a dance. He pulled her flush against him, biting back a groan. He could feel the heat of her radiating through the thin cotton nightgown, threatening to burn if he got too close. But he'd been cold too damn long to care about the danger. Mac's hand flew up to his shoulder, but she made no move to push him away. Dear God, she wasn't fighting, and she felt so good. He spun her against the doorframe, reveling in her tiny gasp of surprise or maybe anticipation. Leaning down, he selfishly took a moment to breathe her in, to press against her, to simply be this close to her, before whispering against her lips, "Why does Rabb still scare you?"

And then he released her, stepping away to the bedroom and his dubious freedom.

- - - - -

**Gran Canal**

**Venice, Italy**

**0413 Zulu**

Eytinge's base of operations was not a restaurant or an auto shop or anything so Hollywood and publicly accessible. No, it was a private set of apartments situated on the Gran Canal, bordered by other apartments occupied by discreet but law-abiding citizens, making it both extremely secure and hideously difficult to access without Eytinge's knowledge.

Sofie drummed her fingers on her hip bone. She really hated intelligent bad guys.

She did however like it being smarter than them. Call her petty and shallow, but she appreciated the ego boost.

"Rossi, would you be a dear and patch the feed for me."

"I would love to." The too perky voice of Maria Rossi chirped at her through the earpiece, while Sofie studiously ignored the fact she was forever at the mercy of an electronics specialist young enough to be her daughter. "How long do they need?"

"I'm hoping no more than five minutes because that's about the maximum amount of time I can give them."

"Five minutes it is."

"Thank you sweetie."

Moving back into hold of the boat, Sofie ran her fingers through her hair. At this rate she was going to go bald before Webb. She might as well face it, waiting for other people to do dangerous work, not her forte. Russia had been easier. She'd always done well alone, when the only person she had to worry about was herself. If she'd had her way it's exactly what she would still be doing. But things rarely worked out the way you wanted them, and sometimes you wound up in Venice worrying about your team. This was why she'd liked working with Webb, he wasn't her responsibility, so she never worried about him.

Maybe she should have worried more.

Agents made mistakes. It was a fact of the business. She of all people knew that better than anyone. One could even say Webb was overdue for a disaster. Lord knew she'd been watching for the signs ever since he'd come, and the fact that the woman who'd been involved in the operation that had almost gotten Webb yanked permanently was sitting in her safe house did not make her feel better. Still she wanted to believe it hadn't been Clay's mistake, and really, she told herself this was what she was supposed to be doing anyway. Time to put all those desk rider skills to the test.

Tapping the headset back to life, she asked, "Rossi, how long are we keeping the video feed from Eytinge's security cameras?"

"Webb was having it forwarded to Langley for analysis every forty-eight hours."

"Okay, forward everything left to Langley with a priority on it, and another copy to our offices. I'll look it over, too."

Yup, absolutely no good at just sitting on the sidelines.

- - - - -

**CIA Safehouse**

**Undisclosed Location**

**Venice, Italy**

**0433 Zulu**

Mac gasped as her back hit the doorframe

It was like being jerked from a surreal and not entirely unpleasant dream, to awaken disoriented and still reaching for a moment that wasn't coming. Mac struggled to come to grips with this new reality, to push past the echo of feelings, Clay's body against hers, the press of his fingers at the base of her spine, the taste of his breath on her lips.

What had just happened? What the hell had just happened?

Earlier, by the front door, that could have been a fluke, a tissue paper moment crafted from adrenaline and memory. But this . . . there'd been no reason for this. Yet she'd wanted him all the same, had been ready to sink into him, lose herself in the storm of feeling only Clay could seem to evoke in her, travel with him one more time to that crazy mixed up place they went where none of it really mattered. And he'd stepped away. No, worse than that . . . he hadn't intended to go there at all. He'd taken advantage of the moment, of her!

Anger surged as his words came back in sharp relief, and she was off the door and on him before the intent had solidified into conscious thought. Grabbing hold of his arm, she spun him around to face her.

"What the hell was that supposed to mean?"

"I thought it was pretty obvious," he shot back with his trademark smirk, emotional armor firmly in place.

"I'm not scared of Harm." But the words sounded overzealous even to her own ears.

For a beat he just looked at her in infuriatingly blatant disbelief. The beat stretched into two, then three and Mac almost bit down on her lip to keep from repeating her protest like a petulant school girl disclaiming an obvious crush. Finally, he spoke, voice soft with a kind of weary challenge, "So answer the question, Sarah."

She thought about asking for clarification as to which question, but it really didn't matter. It was all the same one in the end. Harm was seemingly the eternal question in her life never to be answered to anyone's satisfaction, not even her own. This was just a futile line of argument, a detour designed to put her on the defensive. And dammit it was working.

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it doesn't matter," Clay scoffed, "Harm isn't the issue, is he? Harm is never the issue. Tell me something. When does he get to be the issue?"

"When isn't he the issue for you?! You know, I am so sick of you bringing up Harm every time we get close to anything real."

"Is that what we're doing? Getting close to something? What exactly are we getting close to?" He advanced on her, the mockery in his eyes and voice becoming more pronounced with every step until it had polluted any genuine emotion that might have been there at the start. She couldn't stand to be near him when he got like this, turned into an almost unrecognizable creature that was less than either Webb or Clay, an amalgam of their worst attributes. Twin devils coming out to play, wounding without real purpose, simply because they could, because it felt good.

"Stop it." Fisting her hands in his shirt, Mac shoved him away with more violence than she'd intended. Too quick for her, he caught her wrists, trapping them against his chest so she was pulled forward into him as he stumbled back. "Let. Me. Go."

"No." He refused, fighting all her efforts to get free. "I want to know what we're getting so close to, that the specter of Rabb can't be allowed to derail our progress."

Momentarily resigning herself to the futility of her efforts, she ceased to struggle, exhaling in frustration. "I thought we were finally having an honest conversation about us." She pressed her palms flat against his chest. "All our issues. We have so many, Clay."

"And, what? You're going to stand there and tell me Harm isn't one of them?" Unwilling to listen anymore, she twisted sharply away from him, trying to jerk free, but he moved with her, using the momentum to simply reverse their positions, grip tightening on her wrists until it was almost painful. "No, you demanded the truth tonight. Have the common courtesy to return the favor."

"Why, so you can gloat?"

She'd thrown the accusation out blindly, projecting her own fears onto him, but at her words, his grip slackened fractionally, a flicker of self-disgust skittering across his face, and she realized she'd struck the mark. Like a rubbernecker trying to catch a glimpse of the twisted wreckage of an accident, he just wanted to satisfy his own sick voyeuristic needs. Nearly insensate with rage, she wrenched free of him. He didn't fight her. "That's it, isn't it? This is about your insane need to compete with Harm. You want to know if he screwed up. You're _hoping_ he screwed up. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but he didn't. Harm was wonderful. Caring and fascinating and great in bed. Are these the kind of sordid little details you wanted?" she taunted. "What do you want to know next? How I never had to doubt him? Or how he touched me? He knew just how to touch me. And he was romantic. So much better at romance than you. Face it Webb, he will always be the better man."

"Then why are you standing here with me?"

The flat, emotionless question pricked like a pin, bursting her over-inflated anger with one sharp jab.

Staggering a little in the wake of this sudden exodus of emotion, she sank down onto the corner of the bed. For his part Clay seemed unmoved by her reaction, as though he were guarding against being put on, and she wondered viciously if he did this when interrogating someone, convinced himself every scream of pain or plea for mercy was simply an act.

Mac stared down at her hands as though they might provide the answer which had eluded her for nearly four weeks. They seemed as good a place as any to look, just as likely to offer up insight as her mixed up heart. Why was she here? Why had she left Harm? Oh she knew bits and pieces, knew she'd been unhappy for months, had felt somehow diminished in Harm's presence. Loved, absolutely. Maybe even worshipped to some extent, but she'd felt like a fraud, a counterfeit piece of art, displayed on a too high pedestal. Had been so scared that the first time she fell, she'd shatter, and he'd know he'd been tricked. And the constant fear had taken its toll. Still, it didn't explain everything. It was like only having the edge pieces to a puzzle, you could see the frame but were nowhere near completing the picture.

Taking her silence for refusal, Clay sighed in disgust. "We're done."

Maybe it was the finality in his words when she still had so much she wanted to know from him, or maybe it was her own need to admit this sin she'd been carrying with her, she didn't have the first damn clue what made her desperate enough to say what she said next.

"I don't know."

He turned, arching one eyebrow in eloquent query, but she had no follow up, no further explanation.

"I don't know why I'm here. I didn't have a single good reason for leaving him. I just . . . couldn't do it. There. Are you happy, now?"

"Hardly."

"What do you want from me?" She whispered, fighting the tears she hadn't even allowed herself to shed in front of Harm. She'd be damned if she let Webb have the satisfaction.

"A better explanation."

"I didn't have one for Harm. You think you deserve to know any more than he does?"

"I don't have an opinion one way or the other on what Rabb does or does not deserve from you. But as for the rest of us, yes, we're entitled to more than a simple 'I don't know'"

"Rest of you?"

"I count five in all, though I wasn't paying close attention at the beginning or the end so I might have missed one or two. But still it's quite a tally—five hearts, five lives the two of you went through before you stopped acting like children. All that destruction, and in the end what do we get? 'I don't know.'" He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry that's just not good enough."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" He came to stand in front of her, and though his posture was deliberately casual, she could see the outline of his hands—closed into tight fists—in his pockets. "Brumby and I? Were either of us ever anything more than cheap consolation prizes? Placeholders for what you really wanted?"

The question forced McCool's words back to her. _Isn't Harm the one you always intended to be with?_ Never had truer or more damning words been spoken. Everything else in her life, not just the men, but the time alone, too, her briefly allowed moments of self-reliance, she'd written it all off as wasted time, wrong turns, detours, and side-trips. A family with Harm, that had been the destination, and she'd been so intent on that end-point, she hadn't given any thought to the journey.

Some of what she'd been thinking must have seeped into her face, because after a beat Clay whispered, "That's what I thought."

Her hand flew out to touch his wrist, stopping him mid-turn. "I chose you."

He made no response, but he didn't pull away either, just stood there, rigid and unyielding. Closing her eyes, she continued, "In Paraguay . . . I chose you. Harm and I had had this talk that for some reason, we just couldn't finish." She shook her head with sigh. "God, we could never finish those."

Clay stiffened, trying to jerk away, but she wouldn't let him. Dammit, she was botching this. Quickly, she pressed on. "But it didn't matter, I knew what he wanted, why he'd come." She traced her fingers down the line his wrist, to the soft flesh of his palm, the hard knuckles tucked against it, brushing them in silent entreaty. "It wasn't like with, Mic. I wasn't running to you because Harm rejected me. I chose you."

It was the best she could give him, and the offering felt paltry.

For a long time Clay said nothing, and they just stayed where they were, unmoving, held together by a tenuous thread. Then the fingers which had been so tightly clenched uncurled, and he squeezed her hand just once before letting go.

Flashing her a sharply self-deprecating smile, he murmured, "There's a choice I bet you regret."

She knew he meant it simply as an acceptance of the olive branch, but the statement gave her pause. Sometimes it felt like her entire life was regret, a tapestry woven from nothing more than choices she wished to take back, turns she shouldn't have made, with the Marines and Harm as the only two sparkling filaments of good. But Clay? Did she really regret Clay?

There'd been times in the past when she'd wished she hadn't said what she had to Harm, wished she'd been able to accept what he'd so obviously been offering in Paraguay. And she knew a lot of it had been pride, an unwillingness to once again be the one to put herself out there, set herself up for rejection, when Harm wouldn't or couldn't. But there'd been more to it than that. Paraguay had been a different world, one without rules or pasts, and in that world she'd been able to forget everything else for a few brief weeks. The experience had been liberating. Even in the wake of Sadik, the horror of it all, she'd been so grateful to be alive. Never before had she been that happy to simply be where she was, who she was, and she'd wanted to have that feeling for as long as possible, thought holding onto Clay would keep it for her.

It hadn't. Of course, it hadn't. You couldn't keep a false high. The crash was inevitable, and theirs had been horrible, taken months to climb out of the crater it created. But she'd done it all the same, had put in the investment. She'd like to say she'd done it out of love, but the reality had been more selfish than that. She'd glimpsed something in him worth trying to keep, something she'd been unwilling to give up without a fight.

It had been just a few weeks after their return from Paraguay. She'd snuck take out Italian into his hospital room, earning her a grateful kiss and compliments for her skill in covert operations, and when he'd asked her to stay, she hadn't been able to deny him such a small thing, in truth hadn't wanted to. They'd spent the evening just talking, about nothing really—her caseload, his devious plan to sabotage the reign of the physical therapist he had affectionately dubbed 'Attila', how much she missed Jingo and he missed his horses—their hands never more than a few centimeters apart, fingers tracing veins, playing with rings, tangling and untangling in a wordless communication, making silent promises they'd never be able to keep.

She'd fallen asleep in the plastic recliner, which had obviously been put in the room for the specific purpose of discouraging overnight visitors, and awoken at one thirteen, her back tied in knots that would make a sailor proud, to find Clay looking at her, eyes unguarded.

"Hey," she murmured quietly, reaching out a lazy hand to trail across his fingers, "Couldn't sleep?"

In the low light of the side table lamp, she saw the brief shadow that flitted across his face and wondered how often that lamp stayed on. Chasing it with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, he caught her hand and brought it to his lips, both ignoring the fact that halfway there she had to guide him. "I've been very engrossed in the late night show."

"Clay . . . this can't be good for your recovery."

"Oh, I don't know. I find you extremely therapeutic," he whispered, leaning over to kiss her with an intensity that belied the teasing note in his words. It wasn't the sweet connection of their first time, or the dark passion that would come later. This had been something entirely different, and in the brush of his lips, the slide of his tongue she'd felt . . . more.

There'd been a depth of desire, an untapped well of emotion in his touch that had shocked and overwhelmed her. So many years she'd thought him an empty automaton, incapable of real feeling. And yet, everything about that moment had proved her wrong. It was as though he'd simply been hording his emotion, squirreling it away for a rainy day, and had suddenly decided to spend it all on her.

Harm was always so free with his feelings, so quick to devote himself to a needful stranger just as completely and absolutely as he would any friend, any lover. A selfish part of her had resented his generosity, felt what he did give was somehow cheapened by the fact he would do the same for anyone. And there Clay had been, offering her more than he'd ever given before . . .

It just hadn't been enough.

God, why couldn't it have been enough?

For the first time in her life she'd dared to reach beyond her expectations, thought she could have something so rare and precious. And even though it had turned out to be counterfeit in the end, the fact she'd believed herself worthy of something better . . . that had been real. She didn't regret that, couldn't regret that.

"I don't," she whispered, deliberately meeting his eyes, "I don't regret choosing you."

Clay looked down at her for an uncomfortably long moment, but she forced herself not to drop her gaze. It was her turn to have her truths evaluated, turned over and examined for any hint of deception. She needed him to believe her. If he believed her, then at least one thing in her life had not been a waste.

Carefully, resolutely, he sat down on the other end of the bed, and toeing off his shoes, situated himself against the headboard, right leg tucked under his left, elbow propped on his bent knee. The casual posture seemed so strange on him, and yet he adopted it so naturally. No, she corrected herself, it wasn't strange. He'd always done that . . . at home, with her, there'd always been an air of ease, a languid quality to his movements which belied the instinctive, rigid control he exercised as Webb. How was it she'd forgotten that? How had she been with this man for a year and so forgotten him? It made her wonder if she'd ever really seen him at all, ever let herself look at Clay without filtering him through Webb.

She tried to do it now as he sat there in the shadows, worked to see his neutral expression as something other than impassive, to convince herself the searching quality in his gaze wasn't looking for a point of attack. But it was too hard, he guarded himself so carefully, and she felt naked in contrast, an open book to his closed one. Unable to keep up the effort, she turned her face away, pressing her temple against tightly clasped hands.

The silence extended so long a naïve little part of her actually began to hope he wouldn't press the issue, but in the end she knew better.

"Do you regret what happened with Harm?"

The question was gentle but insistent, like the touch of nurse probing a wound. Instinctively jerking away from the pain, she snapped, "Which part?"

When Clay didn't answer, she turned to stare at him incredulously. He'd leaned back against the headboard, backs of fingertips resting contemplatively against his lips, but there was no sign of relinquishment. Mac sighed in frustration, the exhale becoming a mirthless, strung out laugh halfway through. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"No."

"Why? Why is this important to you?"

"Is it so impossible to think its because I still care about you?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't have an answer you'll believe."


	7. Chapter 7

**CIA Station for Northern Italy  
****Venice, Italy  
****0503 Zulu**

"More espresso?"

Victor looked up at the dark haired young man who'd just entered the conference room where he was waiting, or being kept prisoner, he hadn't quite decided which was going on yet. From the moment he'd entered the office he'd been treated very nicely, and very politely, and told absolutely nothing.

Sofie Candice's assistant was an annoyingly effective cross between a inn-keeper and a watch dog, seeing to his every need, making him incredibly comfortable and refusing to let him do anything other than exactly what was allowed. On top of that he was as unflappable as an English manservant.

"Mr. Galindez?"

"Look, I can do something to help. Just tell me what's going on. We're all on the same side here." Even as he said it, he knew it was futile. The CIA didn't do sides.

Sam smiled, "I'm sure Ms. Candice will be happy to have your assistance when she gets here."

He wasn't sure about that at all, Candice had ignored every one of his calls since he'd gotten to Venice. Turnabout was fair play he supposed. Still before he could push to try to get more out of the assistant, he was gone, and Victor was in exactly the same position he'd been a minute ago. Oh yeah, he bet Sam had gotten on with Webb like a house on fire.

Galindez tipped his chair back on two legs and sighed. This was a lot like waiting outside principal's office, something he'd had way too much experience with in his youth. He was bored. He was anxious. And he was seriously considering throwing pencils at the ceiling to pass the time.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Starting at the unexpected voice, Victor lost his balance, and tipped his chair back hard against the floor. When he came around he saw stars and a very pissed looking pixie staring down at him.

The ironic thing was he'd actually liked Sofie Candice the first time he'd met her, and he'd been pretty sure she'd liked him, too. They'd sat together at the first operational meeting he'd attended as his own man, two non-entities exiled to the political Siberia of the chairs by the coffee-cart. He'd still been finding his way, trying to figure out how to maneuver among these men and women, most of whom still came from a life of privilege he didn't understand.

Sofie had been something all together different, in a way that had nothing to do with her petite-frame, the Slavic cast of her features, or the pithy comments in the margins of her notes that revealed a keen mind, a sharp tongue and the self-restraint to shut the hell up. Instead it had been something more intangible. She had an edge, a bare-knuckle quality, that he understood, that belied the expensive suit and delicate jewelry. And when she'd leaned over to him at the end and whispered "Don't worry, you're just as good as they think they are," it had been a moment of much needed kinship, like two enlisted men in a roomful of commissioned officers.

She was not nearly so reassuring at the moment. Heels replaced with sneakers, suit coat with leather, her blonde hair cropped far shorter than he remembered, she was all street-fight now, blood and spit, and rough edges. And unfortunately most of that fight was currently directed at him.

"Trust him with your life, best the CIA has to offer? How drunk were you, Clayton?" Candice scoffed.

He sat up gingerly, feeling the back of his head for the goose egg he knew was coming. "Two scotches in, I'd bet. By four he starts to get morose."

That got him a smile, for about half a second. "Seriously, why are you in my office?"

"You called me."

"Sam called you, and it was for information. Not as an invitation." She turned on her heel and walked out.

She meant it as a dismissal. He followed. "Well, I'm here now, and don't tell me you can't use the help."

"I can't use you."

"Look," he grabbed her upper arm and whirled her around, "As long as you have Colonel MacKenzie involved in this, you have me involved in this."

Candice just looked down at his hand on her arm, until his mother's home training kicked in and he removed it like a scolded child. Rolling her eyes, she turned and started walking away, muttering, "What does she do? Knot cherry stems with her tongue? Christ." Before he could say anything, she spun back around and pinned him with cool, steel gray eyes. "Okay, lets get a couple of things straight. I don't have Sarah MacKenzie involved in anything. I don't want Sarah MacKenzie involved in anything. She dropped from the sky like fucking Mana from heaven. And all I want is to send her back wherever she came from. But-" She raised a finger to stall his agreement, "that is not my priority. Figuring out why Webb was made is, and until I've done that . . . She. Stays. Put. If you don't like it, please, please, get the hell out of my office."

She was in his face now, all five two, a hundred and ten pounds of her, and even though she had to crane her neck to stare him down it didn't feel like any kind of an advantage. Salzburg. He should have stayed in Salzburg. This woman was a whirlwind, jumping two conversational steps ahead without waiting for him catch up. She made him frustrated and disoriented, and he'd only been around her for fifteen minutes. He wondered how she and Webb had managed to spend all this time together without killing each other.

Well, there was one way he could think of . . .

Three years ago the thought would never have crossed his mind, or at the very least been disposed of immediately. The Marine in him was still a little shocked by the serious consideration he was giving it, but frankly the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Webb could be charming when he put his mind to it, Victor had seen that first hand, and Candice was acting a damn site more unraveled by Colonel MacKenzie's involvement than he would have expected of her.

To hell with it, if she was going to be pissed at him, he might as well give her cause.

"How long have you been sleeping with Webb?"

For a moment Victor was certain he'd just landed himself a one way ticket to Tierra del Fuego. Then Candice's look of stunned surprised changed to one of resignation and she stepped back to lean against the hallway wall. "That obvious, huh?"

He had to give her points. She did casual and unaffected very well, but he'd spent over a year working with Webb, and did bullshit detection equally well. Looking at her now, it didn't take much for him to read the vulnerability in her features, the set of her jaw. His observation had hit a weak spot, maybe one she didn't even know was there before.

Galindez shook his head. "No. Not to someone who doesn't know you."

Her mouth twisted in a rueful smile. "You don't know me."

"But I know Webb." He was about to add he knew the type of woman Webb was attracted to, but he didn't think she'd appreciate being compared to Sarah MacKenzie. "He deals with people who stand up to him in two ways, charm them or challenge them. Kiss or kill. Since you seem to actually like him, I took a guess."

Candice lifted her head to stare at him, and there was the tiniest flicker of respect in her eyes. She crossed her arms, and shot back, "So how long have you been sleeping with Webb?"

Taking only a moment to regain his balance from being so blatantly called on his own bullshit, Victor gave her a vulpine grin and ran a significant thumb along his jawline. "Oh, we didn't kiss."

As it turned out, Sofie Candice had a great laugh.

* * *

**CIA Safehouse  
****Undisclosed Location  
****Venice, Italy  
****0534 Zulu**

Webb had always known he was good at at interrogation. It was a skill discovered early in his career, forged in the training gyms and back rooms of the Seoul Olympics, hardened in the deserts of Iraq. His inherent ability to find that specific combination of pressure and enticement which would make a person open up had been what put him on the Agency's radar for something other than being a Webb in the first place. He could still hear Tim Fawkes as he offered him a job, that seductive note of suppressed admiration in the voice of his father's old colleague. "You have a gift, Clayton."

A gift. He'd known better. Even then with his captain's bars still new, and his soul still spit-polished with idealism, he'd known better. What he did came at a price. A Faustian bargain made with the devil sitting in the other chair—let me understand you and I'll let you understand me.

So he gave a little of himself to his subjects, showed them something real and true, sometimes it was small—a childhood story, a favorite drink—sometimes it was more than even he wanted to know—yes, I am a man who will order your death and see it carried out without hesitation—but always there was an exchange. The trick was giving less than you took.

During his years with the Agency he'd honed his skill, learned to give less and less. Even with Atef, their thirteen day mental chess game, the time they'd spent digging into each other's psyche, he'd been able to keep a reserve, to hold a little back. And yet six years later, here he sat across from Sarah MacKenzie with nothing left. He'd shown her every card and he had no trump, no ace up his sleeve.

Maybe it was better this way. He could press her, force her hand on this, but really what would that prove? Mac had always held her feelings for Harm close, off-limits to everyone, maybe even Rabb himself. If after everything that had happened, she still kept him there, tucked away from the world . . . Well, he had the answer to his question, didn't he? Things were simply business as usual.

And there was nothing here for him.

Yet, as he watched her, taking in every detail, every minute shift of her body, he couldn't help the flicker of anticipation growing in pit of his stomach, that slightly queasy feeling that always came when he knew he had a subject at the tipping point, when it could go one of two ways, either they'd break or retrench, becoming even more difficult to get. And the only thing he could do about it was try to keep that damn flicker from flaring into hope.

For as long as he'd known her, Sarah had carried loss and disappointment, collected it in a way she could never seem to gather happiness, weight added, wounds deepened with every passing year. But always with a will, a gritted determination to soldier on no matter how great the load. Now she just seemed so tired, almost defeated, as though she might lay down her burdens simply out of sheer exhaustion.

In the past he'd played on that feeling in a subject, cast himself in role of the friendly shoulder, ready to take on some of the weight . . .

But he wasn't playing now, and he needed her to know that.

"It's your turn to walk away, Sarah."

For a moment he thought she just might, as her body tensed like a bowstring, but then she turned. Not towards him, not all the way, she remained in profile, forehead resting on clasped hands in almost an attitude of prayer, like a penitent seeking absolution. And he wondered if she truly saw herself that way, the sinner in need of grace. He'd always thought of her as so self-reliant, without need of anyone's help, but maybe she just hadn't needed his, maybe she'd simply been in search of something better, purer than he could ever offer. Was Rabb's love her salvation, confirmation of her worthiness? He could understand it, identify with it even. The times when Harm had liked him were frankly the times when he'd most liked himself. Did that make him uniquely qualified or hideously inadequate to this role of confessor in which he'd cast himself?

It didn't matter in the end. Sarah seemed to come to a decision taking any last chance to change his mind. Propping her chin on her hands to stare off at some distant, unseen place, she whispered, "What do you want to know?"

Everything. He wanted to know all of it, every damn moment, every thread that tied them together. Wanted to know how Rabb had so captured her heart, how he'd kept it. Wanted to understand why they'd held each other at arms length, and why they couldn't let go. He wanted her to take him through the entire journey, to know each turn, be able to map every contour, but she wouldn't, and he knew better than to push for more than he could get.

"Why didn't you marry Harm?"

She'd been expecting the question, and her mouth twisted in a smile of sardonic amusement he recognized as his own influence. "I already told you, 'I don't know.' You deemed it an unacceptable answer."

"Because you do know."

"And what if I don't, Webb?" she snapped, "What if I'm just a loose cannon, a screwed up, unhappy woman who doesn't know what the hell she wants?"

She had turned to face him now, to glare with hard, too-bright eyes that dared him, begged him, to tell her otherwise. He didn't, and the words hung heavy in the silence, sounding too much like the truth.

Just when he thought they both might suffocate under the weight, she broke. "It was supposed to be Harm."

"What was?"

"My happy ending."

Mac felt ridiculous for even saying it, especially to Webb. Ever pragmatic, cold as ice, Clayton Webb who didn't believe in soul-mates or fairytales or anything so silly as all that. And she waited for him to mock her, remind her there was no such thing. When the cutting remark didn't come, she looked over in surprise.

Even with his face in the shadows he seemed to find by instinct, she could see the ironic acknowledgment in his eyes, the pained resignation that her storybook fantasies had never included him, and somewhere deep below it all, the bitter self-awareness that whatever else he was, he would never be a white-knight. She could lie, tell him she'd imagined them with the picket fence, two point four kids and a dog, but he'd know the placation for what it was. There had always been something about their relationship that kept her from indulging in schoolgirl daydreams, from imagining any future for them, even as she clung to him in the present. It was only now, with the twenty-twenty clarity of hindsight, that she could put her finger on exactly what it had been . . .

Fear.

Loving Clay had terrified her. Not in the way it had with Harm. She hadn't been scared of rejection or the loss of independence. It was what loving Clay said about her, and who she was as a person.

She'd always been drawn to danger. From her headfirst tumble into insobriety, to her impetuous marriage to Chris at seventeen, there seemed to be a self-destructive streak within her which sought out the most reckless course. Even after she joined the Marines, channeled that need into something positive, her devil-self remained on her shoulder, whispering in her ear, wanting all the wrong things. And with every stumble, every temptation—her affair with Farrow, the allure of Falcon—she clamped down harder, imposed more rules, fought every attraction that didn't meet certain standards. Available, respectable, but most importantly . . . safe, good. Even Dalton, for all his snake-in-the-grass ethics as an attorney, had lacked any brutality, any spark of a threat and that had been exactly what she wanted . . . rule-abiders who wouldn't encourage her demons. And that had been exactly what she got . . .

Until Clay.

There was a darkness to Clay, a hint of cold violence, which couldn't be entirely masked by the heat of their passion, the light of his love. She'd witnessed it firsthand in Paraguay, but pushed it aside, left it to the unreality of that horrid costume drama. Only months later, in the wake of Sadik, had she let herself understand that the man who put a bullet through Alvaro's skull was perhaps more a part of Clayton Webb than the beaten soul she'd held in Sadik's camp. She could still remember that moment, staring down at her bloodied hand, wondering if she'd be able to taste the Cana if she sucked on the cut, and wanting him back; wanting to lash out at him, to direct her anger at someone other than her own reflection; wanting him to kiss her, just shut her down for a few minutes and make her forget how much the world sucked; but mostly she'd wanted him back because he understood, because he had no moral high-ground from which to judge her.

And yet she'd hated him for that, too. Hated the way his eyes would sometimes look through her, and she'd know he was in a place she never wanted to see. Hated how they clung to each other, adrift and lost, neither strong enough to be the anchor. Hated that he'd wanted her at a time when she'd never felt less worthy of being wanted. No one had been more surprised than she at her round about admission of love, and she'd wanted to take it back the moment it was out of her mouth, spent the next months running from it. Couldn't even say it when she thought him dead, for fear Harm would voice her own thoughts. What kind of woman loved a man like that? There was nothing aspirational about loving Clay. Only the challenge of accepting his faults, his imperfections. She'd seen what accepting someone's imperfections got you . . . a black eye and an abandoned daughter.

But sometimes he'd reach for her, sometimes he'd smile, sometimes he'd touch her and his best would be so good it almost seemed worth it.

She could feel it happening all over again. Not five hours ago he'd embodied everything she despised, yet still made her skin itch with wanting to be touched, her heart race with excitement. He had . . . no, _they _had blood on their hands, barely dry, but as he leaned towards her now, in a posture of rapt attention, like what she might say mattered more than anything, she felt the tendrils of connection they'd shared reaching for her, drawing her back into that seductive embrace.

He knew all the things Harm didn't, what it was like to fight something inside yourself, to hate the face in the mirror. He understood how sometimes your demons just got too strong, and it didn't always feel bad when it happened. But there were so many things he didn't understand. And at the center of them all was Harm. How could she explain that she'd needed to be with someone who would elevate her, keep her from the very part of herself which seemed to so fascinate Clay?

And yet strangely, sitting here, she couldn't think of anyone else who might understand it better. For a long time he had been almost as inextricably connected to Harm as she. Perhaps he'd fought it more, hadn't felt so enamored with the prospect, but it had been there all the same. Even as they faced each other across a cavern of means and ends, Clay and Harm had intuitively understood each other in a way she could only learn from experience. But he had seen Harm through a different lens, one that dimmed the aura which always blinded her, magnified the imperfections she had to find by feel. Yes, in the end he might actually understand . . . maybe more than she wanted him to.

"Do you really believe in happy endings?" he finally asked, cutting into her ruminations, and drawing her back to present.

She knew what he was doing, manipulating her, twisting her emotions this way and that in an effort to somehow solve her, like a Rubik cube. And she thought vaguely she should probably be angry about that, but she hadn't been able to make much sense of herself in the past forty years. What could it possibly hurt to let Webb have a go for a few hours?

"Not anymore."

"Because of what happened with Harm?"

"No," she responded automatically, then sighed, "Yes . . . It's just so much more complicated than that."

"I think I can keep up," he shot back dryly.

She laughed, a short staccato chuckle, but a real all the same, and it felt like a hideously long time since she'd done that. "Well, I can't."

"Okay, lets start with the basics. Then you can work on filling in the details for me. Boy meets girl . . ." he trailed off in invitation, and strangely, she found herself picking up the thread.

"Boy and girl spend nine years just . . ." she groped for a way to describe everything that had happened, "missing each other . . . Girl loses boy. Boy loses girl . . . until they're finally given a 'deadline'," Mac grimaced in pain at the memory of Harm's words, at the little lance of hurt they had caused even then, "in the form of new billets."

"San Diego and London."

Her gaze snapped to him in surprise. "You kept track."

Clay looked away, conspicuously uncomfortable with his unintended revelation. "That's all I know," he added brusquely.

That was an obvious lie. He'd known about the engagement, knew she'd retired. It wasn't a great intuitive leap to figure out what had happened. So she simply made do with filling in the blanks. "We tossed a coin. Heads: London, Tails: San Diego."

She waited for the scathing comment. Instead, he kept his gaze averted, staring out into the soft darkness of pre-dawn, just visible through the translucent curtains. "That seems unlike you."

"Does it, really?"

Clay regarded her thoughtfully through slanted eyes, and she knew he was considering what she'd told him about her past with men, what he knew just from their own history. Dalton and his job offer, Mic and his ring, Clay and his need, she grabbed what was offered without consideration or negotiation, as though afraid it might not be there at all if she waited. Finally, he shook his head. "No, I guess not."

After a beat of uncomfortable memories, he added, "So you lost."

She winced at the phrasing. Intentional or not, dammit the words hurt all the same. Yes, she'd lost . . . everything in the end—Harm, a child, her career. She gambled her happiness on the flip of a coin and came up short. How many times had she sat awake in the darkness of their small flat, waiting for Harm to come home, and thought 'it wasn't supposed to be this way'? How many job interviews did she leave knowing she wouldn't get this position either, and think how easily Harm could have signed his own ticket in San Diego, how much happier they would have been if only she'd won? And how often had she berated herself for thinking that way, for still being so unsatisfied with life when she finally had him, had love . . . Love she'd been willing to risk her life for, to sacrifice anything for. If someone had given her the chance she would have died for Harm, nobody ever thought to tell her how much harder it was to live for him.

"I didn't think of it that way at the time. I thought the whole thing was . . ." she shrugged, "impetuous and romantic."

"And now?"

"Now?" She moved off the bed to pace the length of the room. "Now, I think romantic is just another word for stupid."

Stupid was exactly what it had been, so incredibly stupid, to think that two people whose core problem had always been their inability to compromise, to give even the tiniest inch to the other, could build a life on a foundation which embodied that exact deficiency.

"I always wondered about that." Mac turned, but Clay hadn't moved. His gaze was still fixed out the window, body still in the shadows that were his friends. "How the two of you decided on London," he continued, "It seemed . . . ill-advised."

The dispassionate commentary on her life rankled. What gave him the right to judge her choices like that? Jumping to the defensive, she snapped, "Harm had just been promoted to Captain! He shouldn't have had to give that up."

"But you did?"

"One of us had to!"

He fixed her with an inscrutable gaze. "Why?"

The question drew her up short, and she stared at him incredulously. "How can you ask me that?"

"It's a valid question."

"It's a stupid question."

Swinging his legs off the bed in an abrupt, fluid motion, Clay faced her with an expression of such intense anger, she took a step back. "Why? Because it's Harm? Because he's all the happiness you'll ever need?" He shook his head, rejecting the premise. "You loved the Marines, Sarah."

The tangible sadness in his voice surprised her. Born out of empathy or disappointment she couldn't tell, but it resonated somewhere deep inside, bringing up all her own pain and doubt. Fighting against the feeling, she responded, "It's just a job."

The derisive snort told her he didn't believe that anymore than she did, and Mac turned away, wrapping her arms around herself. She didn't understand him, didn't understand what was happening here. Why did this matter so damn much to him? It changed nothing, _meant_ nothing. Whatever they had been to each other ended long before, destroyed by problems of their own making which had nothing to do with Harm. And whatever had gone wrong with Harm, it didn't alter the cavern between the two of them. Yet he was considering it all with such disturbing intensity, as though it truly bothered him, made a difference.

"You gave it all up for him, and you didn't even think about it, did you?" He phrased it as a question, but there was a certainty in his voice that said he didn't need her answer.

"I gave it up for us, so there could be an us."

"Bullshit." Mac whirled on her heel to glare at him, but he continued on unperturbed. "There had been a 'you' for nine years. Your leaving, Harm's leaving, hell your almost getting married, none of it stopped the two of you, broke you apart. But distance? You couldn't have survived the separation?"

"You can't build a relationship under those conditions."

"We did it under worse."

There was an uncharacteristic hesitancy in his words, as though he were half expecting her to deny it, protest that they'd done no such thing. And it would be so simple to do, to turn this back on him, pick a fight about them because it was, in many ways, easier than dealing with Harm. Harm was still fresh, a raw, unbandaged wound, painful with every touch. Clay was an old injury, a deep ache she carried with her everyday, but familiar, known. Yet for all that, she couldn't bring herself to do it, to so belittle the truth of them for the sake of her own comfort. So instead, she simply nodded in acknowledgment, adding softly, "But we weren't trying to raise a child."


End file.
